<TOGGLE>Attacking Poverty</TOGGLE> and the 'post-Washington consensus'

Has the increasingly pro-poor stance of the World Bank, as manifested in particular in its most recent World Development Report (WDR), caused it to abandon its traditionally free-market attitudes ? The answer is 'yes and no'. The pursuit of 'security' espoused by the WDR has forced the Bank to acknowledge widespread market failure in the provision of security, both social and financial; and this has caused the Bank to espouse some measures very inconsistent with the Washington consensus, such as international capital controls. On the other hand, the old agenda of rolling back the frontiers of the state remains, and is given a new twist in WDR 2000 by the revelation that the 'voices of the poor' are arrayed against bureaucratic abuses. Debate within the Bank has become much more open and transparent, and this has exposed long-persisting internal differences about what markets still need to be liberalized in what environments. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.