Preface [chapter]

2020 The Political Economy of the World Bank  
Preface This book is about the early years of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), commonly known as the World Bank, 1 when it faced the issue of development for the fi rst time, which is now central to its mission. The book concerns mainly the way in which the Bank interpreted its mission and, more specifi cally, with how its persona came into being: what events gave shape to it, what cultural and ideological baggage it carried, and in what historical context it
more » ... k place. Today, the World Bank takes an all-inclusive approach to development. It can be very instructive to study the antecedents of this approach during the years when it was still believed that economic growth is not only a necessary but also a suffi cient condition for the development of a country. Doing so helps us understand why this concept of development did not succeed. Of course, as Paul Streeten rightly reminds us, even during the 1950s "sensible economists and planners were quite clear (in spite of what is now often said in a caricature of past thinking) that growth is not an end in itself, but a per for mance test of development" (Streeten et al.
doi:10.1515/9780804770798-001 fatcat:c7q4ntimcfg6phmoqfolmxbd3i