The Global Architecture of Multilateral Development Banks

"The key contribution of this path-breaking work by Adrian Bazbauers and Susan Engel lies in it approaching the world’s 30 MDB’s as essentially parts of a system. They argue that the substantial resources that these institutions can muster and deploy to developing countries are only half the story when it comes to accounting for their formidable impact. Employing a neo-Gramscian/constructivist theoretical framework, the authors show how in response to the setbacks that have shaken neoliberalism in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the MDB ideological complex has played a vital role in neoliberalism’s adapting to its crisis of legitimacy while still maintaining its position as hegemonic ideology. This status is, however, increasingly fragile, and Bazbauers and Engel guide us in exploring the points of vulnerability where alternatives to neoliberalism might be able to break through." -- Walden Bello, Adjunct Professor of Sociology, State University of New York at Binghamton and co-founder, Focus on the Global South

"In this comprehensive and opportune book, Bazbauers and Engel approach the multilateral development banks from the perspective that collectively they constitute a system of development institutions. From this point of view, they offer fresh insights into the operations of MDBs that are household names as well as MDBs that have been overlooked by scholars. Through their rich analysis of these institutions Bazbauers and Engel reveal the confluence of ideas, power, and global structures that comprise multilateral development finance. As someone who has written on the development banks since the 1990s, this is the most important work on the MDBs I have read in years." -- Jonathan R. Strand, Professor of Political Science, University of Nevada Las Vegas, USA