Selectivity at Work: Country Policy and Institutional Assessments at the World Bank

Abstract

The World Bank (WB) has been at the forefront of a redefinition of conditionality since the late 1990s, away from finance in return for the promise of policy reform, as was typical under structural adjustment, towards the disbursement of funds conditional on what has already been achieved. Under ‘selectivity’ or performance-based aid, aid allocations are rationed on the basis of deviation from an ideal country model, captured in the country policy and institutional assessment (CPIA). This article seeks to situate the emergence of the selectivity practice, and undertakes a close review of the CPIA, the mechanism at the heart of performance-based aid. This is set against the backdrop of the transition from Washington to post-Washington consensus. The CPIA emerges as a prism through which we can observe crucial features of how the WB’s relationship with poor countries is regulated. This reveals the persistence of a set of imperatives in the WB operational practices, often at variance with the WB rhetoric that has sought to move beyond the neo-liberal bias characteristic of the WB conditionality of the 1980s and early 1990s.