Research, knowledge, and the art of ‘paradigm maintenance’: the World Bank's Development Economics Vice-Presidency (DEC)

Abstract

Despite widespread analysis of the World Bank's lending operations by both supporters and critics, there has been little external or systematic analysis of the Bank's research department. This is remarkable, given that the Bank has become the hub of development research worldwide. This article begins to fill in that gap by exploring the political economy of the research conducted within the World Bank's Development Economics Vice-Presidency (DEC). Despite the Bank's public presentation of its research arm as conducting ‘rigorous and independent’ work, the Bank's research has historically become skewed toward reinforcing the dominant neoliberal policy agenda. The article includes a detailed examination of the mechanisms by which the Bank's research department is able to play a central role in what Robert Wade has elsewhere termed ‘paradigm maintenance’, including incentives in hiring, promotion, and publishing, as well as selective enforcement of rules, discouragement of dissonant data, and actual manipulation of data. The author's analysis is based on in-depth interviews with current and former World Bank professionals, as well as examination of internal and external World Bank documents. The article includes analysis of the Bank's treatment of the work of two of its researchers who write on economic globalization and development: David Dollar and Branko Milanovic.