Robin Broad

Research, knowledge, and the art of ‘paradigm maintenance’: the World Bank's Development Economics Vice-Presidency (DEC)

ABSTRACT Despite widespread analysis of the World Banks lending operations by both supporters and critics, there has been little external or systematic analysis of the Banks research department. This is remarkable, given that the Bank has become the hub of development research worldwide. This article begins to fill in that gap by exploring the political economy of the research conducted within the World Banks Development Economics Vice-Presidency (DEC). Despite the Banks public presentation of its research arm as conducting ‘rigorous and independent’ work, the Banks research has historically become skewed toward reinforcing the dominant neoliberal policy agenda. The article includes a detailed examination of the mechanisms by which the Banks research department is able to play a central role in what Robert Wade has elsewhere termed ‘paradigm maintenance’, including incentives in hiring, promotion, and publishing, as well as selective enforcement of rules, discouragement of dissonant data, and actual manipulation of data. The authors analysis is based on in-depth interviews with current and former World Bank professionals, as well as examination of internal and external World Bank documents. The article includes analysis of the Banks treatment of the work of two of its researchers who write on economic globalization and development: David Dollar and Branko Milanovic.

The poor and the environment: Friends or foes?

Abstract The conventional literature in the environment and development field often presents a rather deterministic view of the relationship between poverty and the environment, revolving around the negative impact of the poor on the environment. Based on extensive fieldwork in rural communities across the Philippines, this article is a case study of that relationship between the poor and the environment in a country with severe poverty rates, significant environmental degradation, and a highly organized civil society. As a country where large numbers of poorer people have been transformed into environmental activists, the Philippines offers both a refutation of the traditional paradigm of poor people as environmental destroyers and enormous insights into the conditions under which poor people become environmental protectors. This case study leads the author to posit a set of conditions under which poor people become environmental activists rather than environmental degraders. Suggestions are made as to the relevance of the Philippine case study for understanding the relationship between the poor and the environment in other parts of the Third World.

The Washington consensus meets the global backlash: shifting debates and policies

During the final two decades of the twentieth century, development theory and practice were dominated by a neoliberal ‘Washington Consensus’. This article analyzes the shifting debate over that Consensus. The article focuses on the current ‘elite’ debate about the Consensus in an attempt to gauge the extent of change. It does so by coding primary research materials according to specific Consensus tenets to analyze (1) the individual and collective positions of several prominent, elite actors termed the ‘break-aways’; and (2) the editorial positions of leading publications that serve as key, elite ‘voices’. Washington Consensus tenets are broken into five categories: trade liberalization, deregulation, privatization, financial liberalization and debt-crisis management. This analysis of primary texts leads to the Conclusion that the ‘Washington Consensus’ no longer prevails as an elite northern Consensus, and we are presently not only in a period of debate, but in the midst of a paradigm shift. Robin Broad ...

‘Knowledge management’: a case study of the World Bank's research department

This article looks at ‘knowledge management’, using a case study of the World Banks research department, located in the Banks Development Economics Vice-Presidency (DEC). Despite the Banks presentation of its research arm as conducting ‘rigorous and objective’ work, the author finds that the Banks ‘knowledge management’ involves research that has tended to reinforce the dominant neo-liberal globalisation policy agenda. The article examines some of the mechanisms by which the Banks research department comes to play a central role in what Robert Wade has termed ‘paradigm maintenance’, including incentives in hiring, promotion, and publishing, as well as selective enforcement of rules, discouragement of dissonant views, and manipulation of data. The authors analysis is based both on in-depth interviews with current and former World Bank professionals and on examination of the relevant literature.

Reframing Development in the Age of Vulnerability: from case studies of the Philippines and Trinidad to new measures of rootedness

Abstract This article argues that the contemporary triple crises of finance, food and environment, which have shaken the global economy since 2008, have exposed what should be seen as the Achilles heel of the dominant development theory and practice of the past 30 years: vulnerability. We argue that the crises not only add momentum to the delegitimisation of the old model, but also offer legitimacy for paths that lessen vulnerability and increase what we call ‘rootedness’ (a term we prefer to ‘resilience’ or ‘sustainability’). After offering a brief history of ‘vulnerable’ development and reviewing the literature on vulnerability from the development, economic and environmental fields, we use this vulnerability versus rootedness frame to present analysis from our field work in two ‘vulnerable’ countries: the Philippines and Trinidad and Tobago. Integrating the articles sections, we then propose a new interdisciplinary framework for development that builds on and supplements the human rights, ecological, equity and democracy frames: the notion of ‘rootedness’ at the household, local and country levels.

The development and agriculture paradigms transformed: Reflections from the small-scale organic rice fields of the Philippines

This article tracks the debate about development in theory and practice, moving from the global level of the development debate to the rice fields of the Philippines. The authors offer a reframing of the development debate through the lens of ‘vulnerability’ versus ‘rootedness’ in social, environmental and economic terms. They argue that food and farming are currently at the leading edge of the development debate and of the vulnerability versus rootedness frame. They demonstrate this through their field notes from research with small-scale, rice farmers in the Philippines who have transitioned from chemical-intensive to organic production. The authors then show how their research results mesh with those of others and examine the significance of this farming ‘revolution’ for a transformation of the overall development paradigm.

From extractivism towards buen vivir: mining policy as an indicator of a new development paradigm prioritising the environment

Abstract This article analyses mining policy as an indicator of a larger question: are some Third World governments starting to steer away from plunder ‘extractivism’ towards a paradigm that prioritises the environment? We begin with the cases of El Salvador and Costa Rica, which have major mining bans in place. We then present the results of our research in which we find five other countries with noteworthy mining-policy shifts: Panama, Colombia, Argentina, Chile, and New Zealand. A sixth country, Honduras under President Zelaya, stands as a recent historical case of how sensitive such a policy change can be. A key take-away from our article is that critical development scholars and practitioners need to look more closely at the mining sector – not simply to analyse case studies of specific mining protests and resistances to extractivism, although these are of course important. Rather, there is a need to investigate policy changes that just might be indications that the era of unquestioning extractivism has ended and that at least some governments are initiating policies to incorporate environmental externalities, policies that suggest a changing development paradigm in the direction of environmental – and concomitant social and economic – ‘well-being’ as envisioned in buen vivir.

Environmentalism of the Rich

Cultivating Food, Cultivating People challenges many of the historical narratives researchers often hold up in explaining the development of food systems. First, the region of focus, the Botatwe-speaking part of central Africa, has largely been left out of these narratives because of its unusual dispersed political structure. Second, the book pushes readers to ask why a culture may choose a certain type of food system. This decision may not involve not just efficiency, but also resilience in a variable ecosystem, and involve interplay with social power dynamics. The book moves through time, using largely a linguistic approach to describe the evolution and dispersal of pre-Botatwe foods and cultures from around 1000 BCE to 1700 AD. Over that long span of time, one of the biggest messages is that the trajectory of food system growth is not monolithic nor does it follow a single, straight path. The shifting climate in central Africa from wet to dry and back again left its residents with a desire to mitigate risk through multiple streams of food production. In any given year, one form would be “best,” and there was great value in maintaining open options. Tied to the milieu of food production systems is the unique social structure of the region. The common understanding of the evolution of food systems is the story of a march of progress from hunter-gatherer societies to agriculture and animal husbandry. This account also rests on a social structure evolving towards central power, and a patriarchal nuclear family structure. Instead, de Luna argues that the hunter-gatherer community in the Botatwe-speaking region was more decentralized, with many distributed nodes of power, and with a form of matriarchal family structure that awarded status by multiple kinds of contributions to society. This society changed in tandem with the local environment, shifting from grain-based agriculture to pastoralism depending on which product best fit the climate regime of the time. This non-traditional and dynamic view of social design can have lessons for how we categorize current societies as well. The linguistic approach used to describe the changes in Botatwe food and culture through time allows a methodological lens well tailored to a society that did not leave much behind for traditional archeological and historical techniques. While the analysis through time does include conclusions from examining pottery, jewelry, and gravesites, the nature of the diversity and adaptability

Footloose Financial Flows in the 1990s: Where, What, Why, and How to Tame Them?

The Geography of Money, Benjamin J. Cohen (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998). 272 pp., cloth (ISBN: 0-8014-3513-7),

Unequal Alliance: The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Philippines.

25.00. Capital Flows and Financial Crises, Miles Kahler, ed., Council on Foreign Relations Book. (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998). 288 pp., paper (ISBN: 0-8014-8562-2),