Reforming the World Bank: from social‐liberalism to neo‐liberalism

Using an analytics of government perspective, it is argued that neo‐liberalism as an art of government, especially its form as North American advanced liberal political reason, has shaped enterprise governance and managerial reform at the World Bank. With a focus on the World Bank as a financial banking enterprise, the article explores questions of power, governance and liberal government in relation to the Bank and shifts from social‐liberal to neo‐liberal political reason. It highlights two related dimensions of reforms at the World Bank: education for government in the neo‐liberal styles of problematization of social‐liberalism and the World Bank and secondly, education for enterprise governance in relation to the World Bank becoming a knowledge bank. The article concludes by suggesting that the analytics of government perspective opens different problem spaces to that of critical and orthodox sociology and history.