The world bank as a development teacher

Abstract

The World Bank has been widely critiqued as a source of development norms. Yet one aspect of its activities has received relatively little academic attention: the socialization of development norms through training programs. This article addresses this gap in the literature by analyzing changes in the curricula, pedagogy, and methodology of the Economic Development Institute and the World Bank Institute—the teaching and learning arm of the World Bank. The article argues that, unlike the coercive nature of World Bank loan conditionality, the two teaching institutes have operated quietly in the background attempting to persuasively habitualize and naturalize member country participants into accepting particular understandings of and approaches to development as best practice and common sense. It concludes that the institutes have been active in the creation of toolkits used to socialize individuals into accepting and following World Bank development norms.