The World Bank's Draft Comprehensive Development Framework and the Micro-Paradigm of Law and Development

Abstract

In January 1999, World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn\ncirculated a proposal for a "Comprehensive Development Framework"\n(CDF) to World Bank personnel. Building upon Wolfensohn's previous\npolicy statements, as well as consultative meetings held worldwide\nwith various international development actors, the CDF calls for a new\n"holistic approach to development."\nIt seeks a better balance in policymaking by highlighting the\ninterdependence of all elements of development-social,\nstructural, human, governance, environmental, economic, and\nfinancial. It emphasizes partnerships among governments,\ndonors, civil society, the private sector, and other development\nactors. Perhaps most important, [it puts] the country.., in the\nlead, both "owning" and directing the development agenda, with\nthe Bank and other partners each defining their support for\ntheir respective plans.\nThis New Development examines the CDF and its implications for\ninternational development. Specifically, using microdevelopment\ntheory, including micro-law and development theory, it analyzes the\nCDF and compares it to the Bank's previous approaches to\ndevelopment. On its face, the CDF appears to give the poorest of the\npoor more of a voice in formulating their countries' development\npolicies. Examination of the implementation of the CDF in several pilot\ncountries, however, reveals that it is most often being used as a tool to\nimprove relationships between those countries' governments and\ninternational development donors; the voices of those countries' citizens\nin poverty, as well as other elements of civil society, are largely being\nignored. According to micro-law and development theory, unless\ncountries pay attention to civil society, especially the poorest of the\npoor, development policy is doomed to fail. To that end, this New\nDevelopment encourages civil society, and especially non-governmental\norganizations that represent the poor, to use the CDF as a means of\ngetting to the table and assuming their appropriate place as full\nparticipants in the formulation of development policy.

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