Locating the World Bank: the unmaking and remaking of Development Economics in its shifting vision

The trajectory of World Bank economics is traced including its relationship with development economics more generally. Initially, of little prominence but wedded to the old/classic development economics and the idea of modernization, it has moved through the Washington and post-Washington Consensuses, reducing the understanding of, and policy for development, to how to make the market work better and more fully but with limited attention to systemic economic and social change. It has also come under the narrow if evolving umbrella of mainstream economics whilst both broadening its scope of application across economic and social issues and increasing its influence over the fields of development economics and development studies. More recently, its approaches have converged upon the promotion of (state-supported) private finance, reflecting the imperatives of financialization as a key characteristic of neoliberalism, despite correspondingly glaring inadequacies in light of the crises of global finance, the environment and the pandemic.