Development brokers: the world bank, economic expertise, and the reinvention of global economic governance in the 1960s

This doctoral dissertation offers a revisionist analysis of the political economy of the World Bank in the 1960s, during the so-called Development Decade. By focusing on the construction of economic expertise at the Bank, the thesis shows how the organization solidified its role as a foundational institution of the world economy with a noteworthy influence on the theory and practice of international development. Contrary to prevailing understandings of the World Bank as an agent of economic orthodoxy and later as an engine of the neoliberal agenda, my research demonstrates that the organization was much more open to considering alternative and heterodox proposals, usually associated with other international agencies such as UNCTAD, CEPAL, and later the New International Economic Order agenda. I analyze a number of these proposals – international buffer stock facilities, commodity price stabilization at artificially augmented levels, advocacy for larger capital requirements of the developing world, and multilateral coordination of financial aid programs – together with their institutional paths and the agency of their proponents like Irving Friedman, Andrew Kamarck and Dragoslav Avramović. Relying on newly declassified and previously untapped archival documents and oral history transcripts, my research revisits the complex trajectory of development institutions, economic ideas and specific policy proposals, and adds to our understanding of paths (not) taken during the first Development Decade.