From social dimensions of adjustment to poverty reduction strategy papers : the evolving and revolving world bank discourse on poverty 1987-2003

The World Bank is a major development and lending institution, and as such often sets important aspects of the development agenda. The goal of poverty reduction has in recent years become the World Bank's institutional objective. With poverty reduction as the declared aim, the study looks at the World Bank's main instruments for achieving this goal, i.e. policy-based lending, and how the Bank's approaches to, and discourse on poverty have changed since its creation in 1946 up to the current Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) approach. The hypothesis of this study was that the Bank's understanding of poverty and development has not evolved so much as it has revolved since the 1970s. The study found that the institution had evolved in process, but not in macroeconomic frameworks. Therefore, the neo-liberal paradigms in place do not lead to a fundamental questioning or reshaping of the Bank's approach to Africa. The thesis argues that the purpose of these frameworks may deliberately and/or unconsciously be to reproduce the global capitalist system, but in the context of the poverty reduction objective, it raises unrealistic expectations for donor and recipient. The Bank would be strengthened as an institution by being more conscious of its revolving history and by being more forthright about policy aims. The Bank has not been the only actor who has recast its objectives vis-a-vis poverty reduction. The study also critically investigates how two very different recipient countries have been active in interpreting poverty through their own national policies, and the ways in which these policies and discourses now replicate those manifested at an international level