Economic Growth, Poverty Reduction, and the Role of Social Policies: The Evolution of the World Bank’s Social Development Approach

The World Bank has undergone tremendous change recently. One crucial innovation is its initiative to raise social development to the level of core issue within its development strategy. While the Bank has always been concerned with social issues, the meaning and operational significance of social has changed over time. Using a content analysis of relevant World Bank documents, I distinguish three periods where the meaning of social has changed. The article's main objective is to explain this change in the Bank, allowing us to answer questions about the conditions for policy change in international organizations. Is the World Bank merely adapting to the outside world, or is it engaging in innovative behavior? The case study reveals an alternative explanation for policy change in IOs other than either external pressure or internal advocacy. It shows that external and internal triggers are related and reinforce each other. Keywords: World Bank, development strategy, internal advocates, international organizations, discursive change. he World Bank has undergone tremendous change during the past decade.1 One crucial innovation is its initiative to raise social develop I ment to the level of core issue within its development strategy, as reflected in its 2005 social development strategy.2 While there had never been a Bankwide approach to social development before, the Bank has always been concerned with social issues. However, the meaning and operational signifi cance of the social has changed over time. Once at the core of the development strategy in the late 1970s, social policies seemed to be forgotten over the course of the 1980s. In the early 1990s, social policies were transformed into facilitators of economic growth in order to reduce poverty, before finally returning to become the core of development today. Social policies have always been closely tied to the relationship between economic growth and poverty reduction and thus to the Bank's development strategy. The role of social (development) policies within the economic growth and poverty reduction nexus has shifted according to the World Bank's understanding of development at different times. I argue that the Bank's discourse on the social