Author: Susan Park

Publisher:

Published: 2022

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9780197626504

"Powerful international development organisations like the World Bank recognised that they contributed to ecosystem destruction and a loss of land and livelihoods for people in developing countries in the 1990s. Pressure from activists and the United States led the World Bank to give affected people recourse through an Inspection Panel. Within a decade other similar Multilateral Development Banks would follow suit. I argue that these accountability mechanisms embody a norm of 'accountability as justice', which has now spread globally. I make three arguments for why the norm was created, how the accountability mechanisms operate, and whether they hold the Banks to account. First, the US promoted this norm during debates over how to maintain the efficiency and effectiveness of the Multilateral Development Banks in the 1990s. As the Banks' premier shareholder, the US built on its history of using 'accountability as control' to establish the 'accountability as justice' norm of for all the Banks even when pressure from activists was absent or muted. It was able to do so using its 'power of the purse,' its 'vote,' and its 'voice' in the Banks. Second, the Banks resisted the norm, leading the US to invoke the same practices to demand the Banks reformulate the mechanisms in egregious cases. Finally, the book shows how the accountability mechanisms have become more accessible, transparent, independent, responsive, and effective. Despite these gains, the Banks adhere to the accountability as justice norm as a corrective to their operations rather than to pre-empt harm"--