Institutional isomorphism and the Asian Development Bank's accountability mechanism: something old, something new; something borrowed, something blue?

Abstract

In the 1990s Multilateral Development Banks created accountability mechanisms (AMs) that allowed people affected by development projects redress. Currently undertheorized, this paper examines how and why the Asian Development Bank (ADB) created an AM, and whether the AM serves its purpose to hold the ADB to account and to provide ‘fair hearing of the views of the affected group’. This article argues that the ADB created a new AM because of institutional isomorphism, borrowing the idea of the AM from the World Bank as a result of coercive and mimetic isomorphic processes. Further, that the ADB introduced a mechanism ill-suited to the pre-existing (old) organizational culture of the ADB, which is based on consensus and hierarchical rule-following in the context of ADB operations to further economic growth while upholding state sovereignty. Despite its restructure and recent review, the mechanism's weakness was revealed through a stand-off between China and the AM over an investigation begun in 2009 (creating something ‘blue’). The paper concludes that the AM's ability to serve its purpose will remain hampered as long as ADB maintains consensus around economic growth and state sovereignty over providing recourse to affected people.