This article analyses recent World Bank interventions aimed at improving higher education and local research capacity in low-income countries. Our empirical entry point is a critical analysis of the Development and Innovation Grant (DIG) scheme the Bank rolled out in Cambodia (2010-2015), a virtual carbon copy export of its Academic Initiative…

This paper explores the nature and quality of the participation that characterises the Bank's consultations with external actors and examines the extent to which the Bank is responsive to such feedback when it comes to defining its policy preferences and strategies in the education domain. It draws on a case study of the participatory process that…

A former employee of the World Bank discusses the logic behind multilateral development banks and how they operate, bank ideology and the nature of policy formation, educational and other reforms as loan conditions, the inability of development banks to enforce implementation of their policies in countries receiving loans, and whether the banks…

Using an analytics of government perspective, it is argued that neo-liberalism as an art of government, especially its form as North American advanced liberal political reason, has shaped enterprise governance and managerial reform at the World Bank. With a focus on the World Bank as a financial banking enterprise, the article explores questions…