Development

Abstract

Abstract This chapter develops the hypothesis that the ‘golden age’ of international development organizations may be coming to a close, in part perhaps as victims of their own success. Even if they do not disappear, a recasting away from traditional poverty alleviation in poor countries to provision of global public goods (financial stability, climate change mitigation, and more controversially, security) is likely to accelerate. The chapter is organized as follows. Section 2 discusses the results of the immediate post-war period, in particular the Bretton Woods organizations, the UN system, and the regional development banks. Section 3 considers the parallel emergence of the foundations, the large NGOs with a global reach, and the more recent ancillaries to the established official organizations, such as the vertical funds and trust funds. Section 4 examines a constellation of international developmental actors, highlighting the transition that each sub-group within it is undergoing. Section 5 concludes that the prognosis for organizations caught in this transitional stage in global economic governance is uncertain. The challenge will be for the global community to craft what the 2013 Human Development Report calls ‘coherent pluralism’.