ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the contributions of the ‘H Street Heretics’, who, from obscure offices in the Bank’s environment department, have quietly laid the foundations for a much-needed theoretical renewal, of which their employer has, so far, taken absolutely no notice. It argues that despite its pretensions to excellence, the Bank is not only sadly behind the times, as its research administrator humorously admits in the remark, but is also wary of – even hostile to – ideas that contradict its own preconceptions. The blueprint for the Bank’s 1987 Reorganization refers repeatedly to the intellectual challenge the Bank faces, to the Bank as a ‘knowledge-based institution’ and to its duty to provide ‘intellectual leadership’. Quantity aside, the Bank’s strength, but ultimately its weakness as well, derives from its homogeneity. One of Robert McNamara ore pernicious legacies to the Bank was to wed indissolubly the concept of poverty and the numbers approach.
