The World Bank and the reconstruction of the ‘social safety net’ in Russia and eastern Europe

Since its inception the World Bank has been gradually expanding its functions, with a particular kink in the curve during the age of structural adjustment in the 1980s. In that decade, Moises Naim, a Colombian Executive Director of the Bank, compiled the following list of alternative conceptions of the Bank which were current at the time:

1 ‘The Bank as a Bank’: the function in the original Articles of Agreement, of lending at a profit for developmental purposes, usually the provision of infrastructure.