World Bank Technical Assistance: The Relational Dynamics of Policy Movement

Abstract

The World Bank has been widely critiqued as a global governance actor capable of coercing and persuading its developing member countries to accept its policy recommendations. This article contributes to academic discussion by drawing upon the policy transfer and policy mobilities literatures to analyse the World Bank's two main pillars of technical assistance (TA): TA components (advisory services contained within lending operations) and stand-alone TA projects (loans and credits that solely finance TA). Beginning from the constructivist position that 'development' is a social construct, the article argues that relational dynamics between TA provider and recipient affect the perception of the legitimacy of policy norms transferred from the 'international' to the 'domestic'. The value added of the article is thus that policy legitimacy is not simply conferred by whether advice is technically sound but moreover through the social and political interactions-the relationship-between TA provider and recipient.

Rationalizing ‘gender-wash’: empowerment, efficiency and knowledge construction

“…Recent research highlights the significance of relational dynamics in the process of policy transfer(Bazbauers 2017), extending earlier work emphasizing the Bank's coercive capacities(George and Sabelli 1994;Peet, Born, and Fehrer 2003).…”

Indirect Coercive Transfer and Educational Copying Under Dictatorship: The Case of Tunisia

“…Building upon earlier work in comparative and international education on "education transfer" (Beech, 2006(Beech, , 2011(Beech, , 2012Fryer & Jules, 2013;Jules, 2008;Rappleye, 2006;Rappleye & Paulson, 2007;Robertson, Bonal, & Dale, 2002), this paper examines the uniqueness of the Tunisian case of wholesale policy transfer gone wrong, even when the core fundamental, institutional, and cultural attributes for the transferred policy exist in the form of a vibrant post-colonial apparatus. However, we use the notion of "indirect coercive transfer" (Bazbauers, 2017;Evans, 2009;Jules & Silva, 2008;Stone, 2001) to exemplify path dependency through the ways in which governments are pressured to enact educational reforms when they are dependent on donor support and aid from former colonies.…”