The World Bank and Global Managerialism (Routledge Studies in International Business and the World Economy)

204 Pages·2008·0.791 MB·English

by  Jonathan Murphy

The World Bank and Global
Managerialism
In recent years, a great deal of scholarly and popular ink has been spilled on the
subject of globalisation. Relatively few scholars have addressed the political
sociology of globalisation and, specifically, the emergence of global class for-
mations and a nascent global governance framework. This book is a contribution
towards redressing this imbalance.
The book traces the emergence of the World Bank as a key driver of globali-
sation, and as a central source of an evolving form of elite-driven transnational
governance which the author describes as “global managerialism”. The book
argues that the Bank has expanded its sphere of activity far beyond provision of
low-cost capital for development projects, and plays a central role in pursuing
global economic and social policy homogenisation. The World Bank and Global
Managerialism features a new theoretical approach to globalisation, developed
through an analytical exposition of the key stages in the institution’s growth
since its creation at the Bretton Woods conference of 1944. The author details
the contemporary Bank’s central policy framework, which includes the inter-
twining of public and private initiatives and the extension of global governance
into ever-wider policy and geographic spheres. He also argues that contempor-
ary globalisation marks the emergence of a transnational elite, straddling the
corporate, government and civil society sectors. The book provides two detailed
case studies that demonstrate the practical analytical utility of the theory of
global managerialism.
The theoretical approach provides a robust but flexible framework for under-
standing contemporary global development. It is essential reading for courses in
areas such as International Organisations, Global Political Economy, and Glob-
alisation and its Discontents, and is also relevant to students of development
policy and international economic architecture, among others.
Jonathan Murphyis Lecturer in International Management at Cardiff Business
School, Wales.
Routledge studies in international business
and the world economy
1 States and Firms 7 Alliance Capitalism and Global
Multinational enterprises in Business
institutional competition John H. Dunning
Razeen Sally
8 Multinational Enterprises from
2 Multinational Restructuring, the Netherlands
Internationalization Edited by Roger van Hoesel and
and Small Economies Rajneesh Narula
The Swedish case
Thomas Andersson, Torbjörn 9 Competition, Growth Strategies
Fredriksson and Roger Svensson and the Globalization of Services
Real estate advisory services in
3 Foreign Direct Investment and Japan, Europe and the United States
Governments Terrence LaPier
Catalysts for economic
restructuring 10 European Integration and
Edited by John H. Dunning and Foreign Direct Investment
Rajneesh Narula in the EU
The case of the Korean consumer
4 Multinational Investment and electronics industry
Economic Structure Sang Hyup Shin
Globalization and competitiveness
Rajneesh Narula 11 New Multinational Enterprises
from Korea and Taiwan
5 Entrepreneurship in a Global Beyond export-led growth
Context Roger van Hoesel
Edited by Sue Birley and
IanMacmillan 12 Competitive Industrial
Development in the Age
6 The Global Structure of of Information
Financial Markets The role of co-operation in the
An overview technology sector
Edited by Dilip K. Ghosh and Edited by Richard J. Braudo and
Edgar Ortiz Jeffrey G. MacIntosh
13 The Global Restructuring of the 21 Global Capitalism at Bay
Steel Industry John H. Dunning
Innovations, institutions and
industrial change 22 Foreign Direct Investment
Anthony P. D’Costa Research issues
Edited by Bijit Bora
14 Privatisation and Liberalisation
23 Ford and the Global Strategies
in European
of Multinationals
Telecommunications
The North American auto industry
Comparing Britain, the
Isabel Studer Noguez
Netherlands and France
Willem Hulsink
24 The World Trade Organization
Millennium Round
15 Multinational Corporations
Freer trade in the next century
Emergence and evolution
Klaus Deutsch and
Paz Estrella Tolentino
BernhardSpeyer
16 Foreign Direct Investment in 25 Consultancy and Innovation
Emerging Economies The business service revolution in
Corporate strategy and investment Europe
behaviour in the Caribbean Edited by Peter Wood
Lou Anne A. Barclay
26 Knowledge Economies
17 European Integration and Clusters, learning and co-operative
Global Corporate Strategies advantage
Edited by François Chesnais, Philip Cooke
Grazia Ietto-Gillies and
Roberto Simonetti 27 The Role of Resources in Global
Competition
John Fahy
18 The Globalisation of Corporate
R&D
28 Globalization, Employment and
Implications for innovation
the Workplace
systems in host countries
Diverse impacts
Prasada Reddy
Edited by Yaw A. Debrah and
IanG. Smith
19 Globalization of Services
Some implications for theory and
29 Transnational Corporations
practice
Fragmentation amidst integration
Edited by Yair Aharoni and
Grazia Ietto-Gillies
LilachNachum
30 Growth Theory and Growth
20 A Century of Foreign Policy
Investment in the Third World Edited by Harald Hagemann and
Michael J. Twomey Stephan Seiter
31 International Business and the 35 Infrastructure Development in
Eclectic Paradigm the Pacific Region
Developing the OLI framework Edited by Akira Kohsaka
Edited by John Cantwell and
Rajneesh Narula 36 Big Business and Economic
Development
Conglomerates and economic
32 Regulating Global Trade and
groups in developing countries
the Environment
and transition economies under
Paul Street
globalisation
Edited by Alex E. Fernández
33 Cultural Industries and the
Jilberto and Barbara Hogenboom
Production of Culture
Edited by Dominic Power and
37 International Business
Allen J. Scott
Geography
Case studies of corporate firms
34 Governing Interests Edited by Piet Pellenbarg and
Business associations facing Egbert Wever
internationalization
Edited by Wolfgang Streeck, 38 The World Bank and Global
Jürgen Grote, Volker Schneider Managerialism
and Jelle Visser Jonathan Murphy
The World Bank and
Global Managerialism
Jonathan Murphy
First published 2008
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007.
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© 2008 Jonathan Murphy
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-203-93619-1 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN10: 0-415-41269-2 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0-203-93619-1 (ebk)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-41269-8 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-203-93619-1 (ebk)
Contents
List of illustrations viii
Foreword ix
List of abbreviations xiii
1 Towards a theory of global managerialism 1
2 The genetic code of global managerialism 29
3 The Poverty Bank 53
4 The Managerial Bank 74
5 The Bank, global social policy and civil society 99
6 The Bank and the private sector 123
Conclusion 150
Notes 160
Bibliography 166
Index 185
Illustrations
Figures
2.1 Harry Dexter White and John Maynard Keynes at the Bretton
Woods Conference, 1944 42
3.1 Expanding domain of global managerialism, 1946–present 54
3.2 The CDF matrix 55
4.1 World Wildlife Federation and World Bank alliance 78
4.2 A focus group meeting in a rural area in the Republic of Yemen 84
4.3 World Bank governance indicators 96
5.1 The growing global governance gap 102
5.2 Changing hegemonic order in a developing country 121
6.1 Ispat’s corporate structure before Polish acquisitions and
restructuring, 2004 129
6.2 Karmet gates, Temirtau, 2004 135
6.3 Lenin and Ispat Karmet, 2004 141
C.1 A model of global managerialism 151
Table
2.1 Four stages in the development of global managerialism 32
Foreword
This book began life in Ulan Bator in Mongolia, in the mid-1990s. I was visiting
the country to write some articles for Canadian newspapers about gold mining.
The usual mix-and-match expat dinners in the faded Soviet splendour of the
Ulan Bator Hotel’s dining room were enlivened by the company of various
global business pioneers whose loquaciousness was, I suspected, in inverse pro-
portion to their real prospects of landing that big deal. One of the less plausible
of these fellows was a frayed old man from Peckham in south London, whose
most convincing story was that his wife encouraged him to travel as far, and as
often, as possible. But what was most striking about Peter was his companion, a
tall, lissom Mongolian beauty, who spoke English in the grammatically perfect
but over-formal style that is the hallmark of those who learned the language
behind the Iron Curtain under the tutelage of a teacher whose pedagogical
materials reflected, even into the 1990s, an England of bowler hats and after-
noon tea. Valentina was the lead dancer of the Mongolian National Ballet. The
Ballet had once been a symbol of the fraternal friendship of the Soviet bloc, and
Valentina had studied dance in Moscow and Sofia, where she had adopted her
Russian name. After graduating, she had toured across the world, or at least the
bits of it to which she was allowed to travel, danced at the Bolshoi, returning
home to garlands and adoring press clippings. Now she performed classics and
national adaptations in the crumbling concrete theatre on the edge of town, in
front of ever diminishing crowds, with her increasingly disconsolate troupe.
When Valentina stepped away from the table, Peter whispered loudly in my ear:
Isn’t she beautiful? Every Monday evening, when she doesn’t have a
performance, I give her a good meal here at the restaurant, and we go
upstairs and have sex. I give her a twenty dollar tip. It feeds her and her son
for the week.
Globalisation is a good thing. How could it not be? We are all members of
the same species, and have much to learn from each other, from our diversity
and our commonalities. The idea that walls can be built to constrain us from
meeting our fellow humans always struck me as a barbarity that fatally dis-
credited Communism. But contemporary globalisation, the globalisation of