The World Bank's Mission Creep

The World Bank and the global community have learned a lot about development in the past 50 years. The bank is justly proud of its commitment to being a knowledge-based institution and has consistently responded to development setbacks with thoughtful analysis followed by new areas of lending. At the same time, critics have repeatedly faulted the bank for overlooking certain issues and constituencies, from environmental concerns in the 1980s to civil society in the 1990s. Along the way, the bank has added new tasks to its mandate. In recent years, it has been called on for emergency lending in the wake of the Asian financial crisis, for economic manage ment as part of Middle East peacekeeping efforts, for postwar Balkan reconstruction, and for loans to combat the aids tragedy in Africa. By now, its mission has become so complex that it strains credulity to portray the bank as a manageable organization. The bank takes on challenges that lie far beyond any institutions operational capabilities. The calls for greater focus through reform seem to produce little beyond conferences and consternation, since every program has a dedicated constituency resisting change. To counter these problems, the countries that own the bank?its shareholders?need to elaborate a worthwhile