Correcting Stiglitz: from information to power in the world of development

Abstract

Over the past decade Joseph Stiglitz has acquired a considerable reputation for radicalism. It began with his launching of the post Washington Consensus after his appointment as Chief Economist at the World Bank, and was then reinforced by his subsequent 'resignation' from that post in 2000, followed by his extensive critique of the IMF, above all in his best-selling book, Globalization and Its Discontents. But on closer examination Stiglitz's trajectory reveals a number of telling truths, not so much about himself, as about the World Bank's policies and ideology, the influence on the Bank of the US government (most sharply revealed in the recent appointment of Wolfowitz as President of the Bank), and the dismal science of the Bank's economics--from which Stiglitz has in some respects at most marginally departed. In reality the Bank has responded to its crisis of legitimacy in the early 1990s by de-emphasising neo-liberal theory in principle whilst supporting private capital ever more strongly in practice. Ideologically, this has been marked by a number of shifts in World Bank parlance, from 'good governance' to 'poverty alleviation', and especially its most recent claim to be first and foremost a 'knowledge bank'. Tellingly, these elements are in fact entirely consistent with Stiglitz's scholarly work and were, indeed, strongly endorsed by him during his time at the Bank. Only after he was forced out of the Bank was he forced to accept, however partially, unconsciously and implicitly, that the world--including the Bank--has to be understood in ways that depart from the scholarly tradition he has sought to promote.

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