Boulevard to broken dreams, part 1: the Polonoroeste road project in the Brazilian Amazon, and the World Bank’senvironmental and indigenous peoples’ norms

Before the mid 1980s the World Bank conceived “nature” as something to be “conquered” and “environment” as a source of resources for “development”. By the late 1980s the Bank incorporated norms of environmental sustainability and indigenous peoples’ protection into its mandate, and other development-oriented IOs followed. This two-part paper describes how a fight over the Polonoroeste road project in the Brazilian Amazon inside the Bank, between the Bank and NGOs supported by the US Congress, and between the Bank and the government of Brazil helped to generate the far-reaching change of policy norms. The first part describes how the project was designed as an innovation in sustainable development in rainforests; and how it provoked a firestorm inside the Bank as it moved towards project approva

Emerging world order? From multipolarity to multilateralism in the G20, the World Bank, and the IMF

Many developing and transitional countries have grown faster than advanced countries in the past decade, resulting in a shift in the distribution of world income in their favor. China is now the second largest economy in the world, behind the United States and ahead of Japan. As the relative economic weight of China and several others has come to match or exceed that of the middle-ranking G7 economies, the world economy has shifted from "unipolar" toward "multipolar," less dominated by the G7. How is this change being translated into changes in authority and influence within multilateral organizations like the G20, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF)? Alarm bells are ringing in G7 capitals about G7 loss of influence. According to a WikiLeaks cable from the senior U.S. official for the G20 process, from January 2010, "It is remarkable how closely coordinated the BASIC group of countries [Brazil, South Africa, India, China] have become in international fora, taking turns to impede US/EU initiatives and playing the US and EU off against each other."This essay suggests that the shift in power is much smaller than the headlines or private alarm bells suggest. The United States remains the dominant state, and the G7 states together continue to exercise primacy, but now more fearfully and defensively. China is split between asserting itself as "the wave of the future" and defending itself as too poor to take on global responsibilities (it is roughly 100th in the per capita income hierarchy). The combination of G7 defensiveness and emerging states' jealous guarding of sovereignty produces a spirit of Westphalian assertion in international fora, or "every state for itself." On the assumption that the world economy is in a transitional period, the article suggests reforms in the G20 and the World Bank that would boost their role and legitimacy as multilateral organizations in a more multipolar world

Boulevard to broken dreams, part 2: implementation of the Polonoroeste road project in the Brazilian Amazon, and the World Bank's response to the gathering storm

This is the second part of the essay on the circumstances that led the World Bank to embrace norms and operational policies for environmental and indigenous people's protection in the late 1980s, as traced through the turbulent history of the Polonoroeste road project in the Brazilian Amazon. Polonoroeste became the spearhead with which environmental NGOs made their first attack on the Bank for participating in large-scale environmental and indigenous peoples' destruction

The opening of minds towards more active government that steers the production structure

Deep society-wide crises tend to produce new economic thinking. 2020 familiarized many millions with trauma and loss. It also intensified the questioning – already started by the North Atlantic Financial Crisis (NAFC) of 2007-12 and by the dramatic rise of China on world technology and military frontiers – of the conservative ideology or world view which has dominated the economics profession and economic statecraft across the capitalist world for the past four decades – dominated as though simple common sense, quietly transforming western societies. This essay discusses the content of emerging thinking about the role of the state, and causes of the changes. But first, more on where we are coming from: from the deeply entrenched conservative ideology and its anti-government “intervention” in the economy

The social construction of the Washington Consensus on international trade policy

This chapter reflects the main ‘lesson’ I drew from the experience of doing a PhD in Bailey’s department at Sussex – the lesson being the virtues of understanding ‘big level’ phenomena by ‘soaking and poking’ at street level. I’ve written a lot about the World Bank with this approach. My chapter starts with reference to Tomas Piketty’s recent Capitalism and Ideology, in which he gives ‘ideology’ (or ‘mindset’ or ‘world view’) much more causal role – in income/wealth inequality trends – than other economists do. Then on to the Washington Consensus ideology, dominant in western capitals since 1980s, about appropriate public policies for developing countries. My interest is in how its dominance has been protected, via ‘the social construction of reality’. Then to ethnography – of a particular two-day meeting at UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade & Development, based in Geneva) I attended in 2012, on ‘rethinking trade policy’ with some 30 people (as I recall, offhand). I bring out how little rethinking there was, by design. The ‘rethinking’ meeting confirmed the Washington Consensus – which is all the more striking, because UNCTAD is the one UN development agency meant to be run by and for developing countries

Why is the IMF at an impasse, and what can be done about it?

The International Monetary Fund is at an impasse, acutely short of secure lending resources. The main reason is that the US Congress is blocking ratification of an agreement reached in 2010 by all member states that would almost double its permanent loanable funds (its quota). World leaders should be worried that the Fund is currently relying on the good will of countries to supply it with short-term loans which it can on-lend to countries in crisis. This is not a solid foundation for the nearest thing the world system has to an international lender-of-last- resort. Since the IMF's multilateral functions cannot be readily replicated, it is important to find a way out. All solutions lead back to the US veto, the US being the only state (Treasury or Congress) able to veto supermajority decisions. The prospect of more financial crises ahead while the Fund is chronically short of secure lending resources should focus all minds on how to end the US veto. Otherwise the Fund will follow the WTO towards irrelevance, to the benefit of the few countries at the strong end of bilateral and regional arrangements

The Opening of Minds Towards more Active Government that Steers the Production Structure

Deep society-wide crises tend to produce new economic thinking. 2020 familiarized many millions with trauma and loss. It also intensified the questioning – already started by the North Atlantic Financial Crisis (NAFC) of 2007-12 and by the dramatic rise of China on world technology and military frontiers – of the conservative ideology or world view which has dominated the economics profession and economic statecraft across the capitalist world for the past four decades – dominated as though simple common sense, quietly transforming western societies. This essay discusses the content of emerging thinking about the role of the state, and causes of the changes. But first, more on where we are coming from: from the deeply entrenched conservative ideology and its anti-government “intervention” in the economy

The American paradox: ideology of free markets and the hidden practice of directional thrust

The USA presents a paradox. The US state has practised production-focused industrial policy from the early years of the republic, with benefits that by any plausible measure far exceed costs. But since the 1980s, the exchange-focused idea that ‘the free market is what works, and having the state help it is usually a contradiction in terms’ has been at the normative centre of gravity in public policy discourse. With ‘industrial policy’ rendered toxic, the state has disguised its production-focused practice, to the point where even non-ideological academic researchers claim that the USA does industrial policy not at all, or badly. This essay reviews the history of US industrial policy, with an emphasis on ‘network-building industrial policy’ over the past two decades. At the end, it draws a lesson for policy communities in other countries and interstate development organisations such as the World Bank and IMF

The Relationship between Marital Status and Psychological Resilience in Chronic Pain

We examined the relationship between marital status and a 2-stage model of pain-related effect, consisting of pain unpleasantness and suffering. We studied 1914 chronic pain patients using multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA) to clarify whether marital status was a determinant factor in the emotional or ideational suffering associated with chronic pain after controlling for pain sensation intensity, age, and ethnicity. Marital status was unrelated to immediate unpleasantness (). We found a strong association with emotional suffering () but not with negative illness beliefs (). Interestingly, widowed subjects experienced significantly less frustration, fear, and anger than all other groups (married, divorced, separated, or single). A final MANCOVA including sex as a covariate revealed that the emotional response to pain was the same for both widow and widower. Only those individuals whose spouse died experienced less emotional turmoil in the face of a condition threatening their lifestyle. These data suggest that after experiencing the death of a spouse, an individual may derive some “emotional inoculation” against future lifestyle threat