Common Ground for Sociology and the World Bank?

Abstract

Inclusive States: Social Policy and Structural Inequalities, edited by Anis A. Dani and Ar j an de Haan. Washington, DC: The World Bank, 2008. 418pp. $30.00 paper. ISBN: 9780821369999. In the early 1990s, there were few institu tions more criticized by the typical sociolo gist than the World Bank. The World Bank (henceforth Bank), along with the Inter national Monetary Fund (IMF), the U.S. government, and other international organi zations had pushed structural adjustment programs onto developing countries in the 1980s. Developing countries were coerced into budget cuts and austerity, retrench ments of social programs, strict monetary policies, and a host of other neoliberal plans. This bold policy experiment occurred because of the leverage these organizations had on developing countries, which were faced with balance of payments crises, mas sive debt, and stagnant economies. In what was a rather dramatic set of failures, howev er, these prescriptions were rarely effective. Most of Latin America did not grow at all in the 1980s, Africa experienced a notable decline, and the East Asian success stories often succeeded by foregoing the involve ment and advice of organizations like the Bank. Countries like Argentina that did fol low the neoliberal game plan carefully, hard ly saw the success that was promised. In short, after the 1980s, many viewed the Bank with a great deal of skepticism. In the years that followed, the Bank seemed to diverge from the IMF and other members of the Washington Consensus. While working at the World Bank, Joseph Stiglitz vocally criticized the IMF for its poor management of the Asian financial cri sis, and the Bank seemed to reprioritize on poverty reduction. By the late 1990s, talk of institutions, infrastructure, equity, capabili ty, the state, and sustainable development began to emerge from the Bank. In the early 2000s, after recently completing his term as Chief Economist and Senior Vice President at the Bank, Nicholas Stern even told an audience at Duke University that the struc tural adjustment reforms in the 1980s were probably a mistake. The Bank seemed to reach out to a broader set of perspectives, and even (gasp) hired sociologists. By now, the Bank seems to be genuinely engaged with a more diverse set of scholarly tradi tions than simply neoclassical economics and seems to encourage and cultivate debate on what historically have been sociological topics. Indeed, it might not be unreasonable to suggest the Bank is occasionally setting the agenda for academics. These two volumes are part of the Bank's apparent effort to broaden debates about development and poverty reduction. Specif ically, these are two of the three published volumes in the Bank's series on New Fron