World Bank Technical Assistance: The Relational Dynamics of Policy Movement
| Author | Adrian Robert Bazbauers |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/pad.1796 |
| Date | 01 October 2017 |
| Published date | 01 October 2017 |
WORLD BANK TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE: THE RELATIONAL
DYNAMICS OF POLICY MOVEMENT
ADRIAN ROBERT BAZBAUERS*
University of Canberra, Australia
SUMMARY
The World Bank has been widely critiqued as a global governance actor capable of coercing and persuading its developing
member countries to accept its policy recommendations. This article contributes to academic discussion by drawing upon the
policy transfer and policy mobilities literatures to analyse the World Bank’s two main pillars of technical assistance (TA):
TA components (advisory services contained within lending operations) and stand-alone TA projects (loans and credits that
solely finance TA). Beginning from the constructivist position that ‘development’is a social construct, the article argues that
relational dynamics between TA provider and recipient affect the perception of the legitimacy of policy norms transferred from
the ‘international’to the ‘domestic’. The value added of the article is thus that policy legitimacy is not simply conferred by
whether advice is technically sound but moreover through the social and political interactions—the relationship—between
TA provider and recipient. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
key words—World Bank; technical assistance; policy movement; development
INTRODUCTION
The World Bank has been widely critiqued as a global governance actor capable of influencing its developing
member countries to accept its policy recommendations. Academia has notably focused on its coercive prescription
of neoliberal policy reforms since the 1980s (George and Sabelli, 1994; Caufield, 1996; Peet, 2009). Yet the liter-
ature has not provided equal analysis of the more persuasive ways it moves policy from the ‘international’to the
‘domestic’. While strong research exists, analysing its non-coercive instruments—including its research bodies and
online knowledge portals (King, 2002; Wilks, 2002; Stone, 2013), there remains room to explore the subject fur-
ther. This article contributes to ongoing discussions on the World Bank and transnational policy movement by
analysing the institution’s provision of technical assistance (TA). Defined as the transfer or adaptation of ideas,
knowledge, practices and skills to foster development (McMahon, 1997, 2), the importance of TA derives from
its capacity to internalise particular thoughts about and responses to development in recipients (Smith, 2008, 238).
‘Development’is both discourse and an exercise of power (Escobar, 1988, 430–431). Yet, as discourse, it
remains a social construction. It is based on competing claims as to what development is and how it is to be
achieved. A range of voices—the modernisation framework, dependency theory, gender-based analyses and
post-development approaches—all provide their own discursive understandings, meaning that development is
ultimately a series of normative positions that change over time and are dependent upon the point of view of the
observer. Sachs (2010, xvi) is clear in commenting that ‘development is much more than just a socio-economic
endeavour; it is a perception which models reality.’The question then becomes, if development is whatever an
actor says it is, how does that actor encourage another to accept and adopt its way of thinking? Given that
development is a social construction, tools are needed to either coerce or persuade recipients to embrace particular
ideas and practices as legitimate. For the World Bank, TA is one such tool.
*Correspondence to: A. R. Bazbauers, School of Government and Policy, Faculty of Business, Government and Law, University of Canberra,
Canberra, Australia. E-mail: adrian.bazbauers@canberra.edu.au
public administration and development
Public Admin. Dev. 37, 246–259 (2017)
Published online 24 February 2017 in Wiley Online Library
(wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/pad.1796
Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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