TY - JOUR
T1 - Disequilibrium in Development Finance
T2 - The Contested Politics of Institutional Accountability and Transparency at the World Bank Inspection Panel
AU - Sovacool, Benjamin K.
AU - Naudé Fourie, Andria
AU - Tan-Mullins, May
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 The Authors. Development and Change published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Institute of Social Studies
PY - 2019/7
Y1 - 2019/7
N2 - This article examines the dynamic nature with which independent accountability mechanisms operate. Focusing on the World Bank, the authors argue that its Inspection Panel evolves according to internal and external pressures. In seeking to achieve equilibrium, and protect its authority and independence, the Panel has gone through several distinct phases: negotiation, emergence, protracted resistance, assertion of independence and authority, renewed tension, and contestation. The core novelty of the article is its application of concepts from outside the field of development studies — notably institutional accountability from the governance literature, and judicialization from the legal studies literature — to the topic of the Inspection Panel. Examining the Panel in this way demonstrates that accountability mechanisms represent a hybrid of transnational governance influenced by a range of actors including project-affected peoples, national governments, managers and development donors. Accountability in development finance is about competing interests as well as competing conceptions and expectations of accountability. In such a complex and multi-scalar system, the Panel is not only concerned with delivering well-researched investigation reports; it is also an entity seeking to ensure its own survival, as well as an arbiter of its own brand of legitimacy and accountability.
AB - This article examines the dynamic nature with which independent accountability mechanisms operate. Focusing on the World Bank, the authors argue that its Inspection Panel evolves according to internal and external pressures. In seeking to achieve equilibrium, and protect its authority and independence, the Panel has gone through several distinct phases: negotiation, emergence, protracted resistance, assertion of independence and authority, renewed tension, and contestation. The core novelty of the article is its application of concepts from outside the field of development studies — notably institutional accountability from the governance literature, and judicialization from the legal studies literature — to the topic of the Inspection Panel. Examining the Panel in this way demonstrates that accountability mechanisms represent a hybrid of transnational governance influenced by a range of actors including project-affected peoples, national governments, managers and development donors. Accountability in development finance is about competing interests as well as competing conceptions and expectations of accountability. In such a complex and multi-scalar system, the Panel is not only concerned with delivering well-researched investigation reports; it is also an entity seeking to ensure its own survival, as well as an arbiter of its own brand of legitimacy and accountability.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85068258731&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/dech.12427
DO - 10.1111/dech.12427
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85068258731
SN - 0012-155X
VL - 50
SP - 867
EP - 895
JO - Development and Change
JF - Development and Change
IS - 4
ER -