The puzzling geopolitics of America's support for proposed World Bank reforms

In supporting a pivot away from the primary concerns of low-income countries, the US risks losing an important lever of policy influence around the world.

I: A changing World Bank at a pivotal geopolitical moment

The World Bank is in the middle of considering reforms to its mandate and scope of operations. As I argued in an earlier post, the proposed reforms likely mean that that Bank’s attention and resources will shift away from low to middle income countries; as well as from poverty alleviation in low-income countries to providing global public goods (such as addressing climate change).

Of course, reasonable people can debate the merits of this conclusion. However, there is no escaping the fact that the Bank’s constrained resource envelope coupled with its proposed expanded mandate and shifts in focus present real trade-offs in the real world that cannot be ignored (more on this here, here, here, and here).

All indications are that the United States, the World Bank’s most influential shareholder (and the de facto appointing authority of the Bank’s president), supports the changes. It is public information that the US opposes an increa…