The Evolution of the Development Discourse of the World Bank and Its Evaluation in the Context of the Economic Theory

Abstract

World Bank is an international development and financial institution, which was founded with the name International Reconstruction and Development Bank and located within the United Nations; offering customized resources, development prescriptions, consultancies and loans to the many countries from various parts of the world. The largest part of the World Bank Group is the World Bank which is the greatest organization working on private sector initiatives and projects in developing countries; providing technical assistance and development proposals to the businesses and governments. The adopted development approaches of this organization and its policy prescriptions to countries has evolved parallel to the periodic characteristics of capitalism and the change in the economic theory corresponding to these periods since its foundation. The aim of the thesis is to evaluate the evolution of the development discourse of the World Bank, and to put forward whether this evolution realizing parallel with the evolution of the development and economic theories. In that context, the evolution of the development discourse of the World Bank is handled in three period in thesis. In these three periods, the development discourse of the World Bank has been shaped under the influence of Keynesian economic theory, neoliberal ideology and neoclassical economic theory, and the basic principles of the new institutional school of economics, respectively. Through a review of the literature and history, this thesis has made clear the ways in which the World Bank’s discourse of development has both influenced and also been influenced by the evolution of the development and economic theories.