Annual Great Lakes Conference

The World Banks Comprehensive Development Framework: Global Governance of Capital? Arne Rckert Carleton University Department of Political Science

Abstract: The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have recently sought to redefine their approach to development, moving away in their rhetoric from conditionality and structural adjustment towards poverty reduction and country ownership. This policy shift is reflected in the 1999 launch of the Comprehensive Development Framework (CDF), a new, supposedly more holistic approach to development that encompasses non-economic policies and emphasizes the needs of the poor and their participation in the policy-making process. In each country, the CDF is operationalized through a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP), a policy statement to be formulated by each developing country that identifies the obstacles to poverty reduction and strategies for overcoming them. In this paper, I will argue from a neo-Gramscian perspective that the CDF can be understood as a new mechanism for the global governance of capital, managed and coordinated by the international financial institutions (IFIs). Under the CDF, countries must assume a set of neoliberal (capital-friendly) macroeconomic and structural policies, as defined by the IFIs in the PRSP Sourcebook. The CDF has been presented by the IFIs as a means of incorporating social issues into development practice and granting ownership of policies to the developing world, but on closer inspection it turns out to be a means of tying developing countries to a rigid neoliberal framework and disciplinary agenda. I argue that rather than opening up space for nationally driven policies and encouraging country ownership, the PRSP instead provides a comprehensive tool of control for the IFIs to monitor macroeconomic, structural and social government policies across the board.