Paradigm and nexus: neoclassical economics and the growth imperative in the World Bank, 1948–2000

Abstract

The story of post-Second World War international political economy is often told as a series of paradigm shifts: from Keynesianism to neoliberalism to the post-Washington Consensus. This article argues that the paradigm story struggles to explain both continuity and change in postwar development policy in the World Bank. First, throughout the postwar era, the Bank remained oriented to neoclassical growth. Second, despite the continued focus on growth, the Bank agenda also changed in incremental ways that did not amount to a paradigm shift. This article builds on previous critiques of the paradigm concept to propose the concept of a ‘policy nexus’. I use this theoretical approach to argue that postwar Bank policy was structured by a series of nexuses constituted by shifting configurations of actors, knowledge, anchoring devices, institutional rules and political imperatives. I theorize the formation, reproduction and reconfiguration of nexuses by articulating the complementarities and tensions that stabilize and destabilize them.