Reforming the World Bank: From Social-Liberalism to Neo-Liberalism

Using an analytics of government perspective, it is argued that neo-liberalism as an art of govern? ment, 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 finan? cial banking enterprise, the article explores questions of power, governance and liberal government in relation to the Bank and shifts from social-liberal to neo-liberal political reason. It highlights two related dimensions of reforms at the World Bank: education for government in the neo-liberal styles of problematization of social-liberalism and the World Bank and secondly, education for enterprise governance in relation to the World Bank becoming a knowledge bank. The article concludes by suggesting that the analytics of government perspective opens different problem spaces to that of critical and orthodox sociology and history.