US ‘hegemony’ in the World Bank

International Political Economy (IPE) builds on the premise that every economic issue is simultaneously a political issue, even more so with respect to the international than to the national realm. IPE scholars have treated the World Bank as a major economic and political actor in the international arena, and studied how it is influenced by and influences different states and other interest groups. We provide an overview of the IPE perspective on the Bank, paying special attention to the United States as its largest and most powerful shareholder and to Gramsci’s hegemony theory. We argue that two concepts from sociological organization theory, ‘strategic ignorance’ and ‘organized hypocrisy’, allow us to better understand the workings of US ‘hegemony’ in the Bank. We illustrate their analytical value in combination with a hegemony framework by applying them to three cases of power struggles over the content of ‘development knowledge’ and ‘best practice policies’.