The Role of the World Bank in Poverty Alleviation and Human Development in the Twenty-First Century: An Introduction
The Role of the World Bank in Poverty Alleviation and Human Development in the Twenty-First Century: An Introduction
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世界银行在二十一世纪扶贫和人类发展中的作用：简介
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发表时间：
2007
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Susan Park
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
C. Weaver;Susan Park
这个月，也就是2007年10月，全世界140多家期刊参与了一项努力，旨在提高人们对贫困与人类发展这一全球主题的认识，并刺激研究。本着这一精神，《全球治理》本期特刊介绍了世界银行这一卓越的国际发展援助机构，其核心使命是减轻贫困，促进人类发展和经济增长。1944年7月1日，二战战胜国在新罕布什尔州的布雷顿森林成立了世界银行（以下简称世界银行），旨在为重建战后的欧洲提供所需的资金和技术援助。从那时起，世行已经转变为一个规模更大、定义更广泛的发展机构，其自我特征是其华盛顿特区大厅悬挂的横幅：“我们的梦想是一个没有贫困的世界。”世界银行集团的任务和活动反映了对“发展”的理解在过去60年中得到了显著扩展。如今，世行就基础设施、性别、可持续发展、艾滋病防治、反腐败和冲突后重建等各种发展问题提供贷款、赠款、技术援助以及极具影响力的研究和数据。然而，这些年来，世行已经付出了代价。对于世行的努力是否取得了成功，人们几乎没有达成共识。一方面，世行的支持者赞扬了显示绝对贫困和其他经济增长和人类发展指标大幅减少的统计数据。另一方面，越来越多的世界银行批评者对这些说法提出了异议，提出了他们自己对证据的解释，认为世界银行在促进公平、持续增长或人类发展方面没有起到有效作用，在某些情况下还导致了发展中国家许多地区的贫困长期存在。无论你同意前一种说法还是后一种说法，你都很难否认，上世纪90年代反全球化抗议运动的迅猛发展，已经使世界银行成为一个非常受欢迎的目标，这是隐喻性的——有时甚至是字面上的——扔番茄。世行内外人士普遍认为，世行正处于危机之中。这场危机的第一个方面涉及世行的合法性。批评人士猛烈抨击世行意识形态僵化、援助项目内部普遍存在腐败、官僚机构透明度和问责机制薄弱。世行组织治理缺乏民主，体现在执行委员会的加权投票规则和作为世行行长遴选过程基础的“君子协定”上，这进一步损害了世行的合法性。这导致许多批评人士将世行视为其最强大的成员国——美国的使女。与此同时，不受控制的任务蔓延、政策授权与绩效之间持续存在的差距以及发展贷款结果的历史参差不齐，引发了对世行有效性的批评。私人资本的充裕和主要中等收入国家对世行贷款需求的明显下降，使政治光谱两个极端的批评者有理由质疑世行存在的理由。自1994年世界银行成立50周年以来，关于是拆除、改造还是“拯救”世界银行的辩论一直是非政府组织、学术界和华盛顿特区智库最喜欢讨论的话题。(2)最近，世行行长保罗•沃尔福威茨因参与其前女友、世行职员沙哈•阿里•丽扎（Shaha Ali Riza）的晋升和加薪而引发争议，这使所有这些批评变得更加复杂。欧洲的执行董事们反对沃尔福威茨继续担任世行行长一职。在此期间，世行员工对这位自诩为反腐败捍卫者的伪善进行了前所未有的抗议，媒体也对他大肆渲染。…
This month, October 2007, more than 140 journals worldwide are participating in an effort to raise awareness and stimulate research on a global theme of poverty and human development. In this spirit, Global Governance presents this special issue on the World Bank, the preeminent international development aid agency whose core mission is the alleviation of poverty and the promotion of human development and economic growth. Established on 1 July 1944, in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, by the victors of World War II, the World Bank (hereafter the Bank) was designed to provide needed capital and technical assistance to rebuild postwar Europe. Since then, the Bank has transformed into a much larger and more broadly defined development institution, self-characterized by the banner hanging in its Washington, DC, lobby: "Our Dream Is a World Free of Poverty." The World Bank Group's (1) mandates and activities reflect an understanding of "development" that has dramatically expanded over the past sixty years. Today the Bank provides loans, grants, technical assistance, and highly influential research and data on development issues as varied as infrastructure, gender, sustainable development, AIDS prevention and treatment, anticorruption, and postconflict reconstruction. Yet the years have taken a toll on the Bank. There is little, if any, consensus on whether the Bank has been successful in its endeavors. On the one hand, Bank proponents laud statistics demonstrating the dramatic reduction in absolute poverty and other indicators of economic growth and human development. On the other hand, Bank critics--an ever growing group--dispute these claims, providing their own interpretation of the evidence to argue that the Bank has not been effective in fostering equitable, sustained growth or human development, and in some instances has contributed to the perpetuation of poverty in many areas of the developing world. Whether you agree with the former or the latter statement, it is difficult to dispute that the tremendous growth of antiglobalization protest movements in the 1990s has made the World Bank a very popular target for metaphorical--and sometimes quite literal--tomato throwing. It is widely perceived by those inside and outside the institution that the Bank is in crisis. The first aspect of this crisis concerns the Bank's legitimacy. Critics lambaste the Bank for its ideological rigidity, pervasive corruption within aid programs, and weaknesses in bureaucratic transparency and accountability mechanisms. The Bank's legitimacy is further damaged by the perceived lack of democracy in its organizational governance, epitomized by the weighted voting rules of the executive board and the "gentlemen's agreement" underlying the selection process of the Bank presidency. This has led many critics to see the Bank as the handmaiden of its most powerful member state, the United States. At the same time, unchecked mission creep, persistent gaps between policy mandates and performance, and a checkered history of development loan results have given rise to criticism of the Bank's effectiveness. And the abundance of private capital and the observable decline in demand for Bank lending from major middle-income countries give critics from both extremes of the political spectrum cause to question the very raison d'etre of the Bank. Since the Bank's fiftieth anniversary, in 1994, the debate on whether to demolish, reinvent, or "rescue" the Bank has been a favorite topic of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), academics, and DC Beltway think tanks. (2) All of these criticisms have been compounded by the recent controversial departure of the Bank's president, Paul Wolfowitz, as a result of his involvement in the promotion and pay raise of his former girlfriend, Bank staffer Shaha Ali Riza. European executive directors opposed Wolfowitz's intention to remain in the top job amid an unprecedented staff revolt and media circus over the hypocrisy of the self-depicted anticorruption champion. …