The post-Washington consensus and lending operations in agriculture

Abstract

Many observers of the World Bank have commented on the disjuncture between the World Bank’s rhetoric and the reality of lending operations. ‘Schizophrenia’ is a favoured characterisation (Rich 1994, 182; Kapur et al. 1997, 125; Winters 1997; Gavin and Rodrik 1995, p. 331), although Gustav Ranis prefers a metaphor that goes literally to the heart of the organisation, positing ‘two separate circulatory systems [in the Bank] with relatively little real capillary action between them’: One, encompassing the President’s office, the Bank’s research wings, and, usually, the chief economist in each of the operating regions, is concerned with generating, or at least propagating, innovative ideas and analyses …. The other encompasses the operating departments, where the continuous flow of project and programme lending approvals is what matters, where the frequent arrival of ‘new direction’ ideas is met with a jaundiced eye and the well-worn bureaucratic response that ‘we are already doing it’, and where it is generally recognised that the bottom line chances for recognition and promotion are largely tied to being polite but getting on with the lending.

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