ABSTRACT
To make the World Bank work the best it can, for the poor people who need it most, first requires an analysis of where the bank fails, before any one single policy approach, such as social accountability. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) were established near the end of World War II in 1944, when 44 allied nations met at Bretton Woods in the United States. In a speech during the World Banks spring meetings in 2011, former bank President Robert Zoellick made the case for reform of the bank. The banks engagement with civil society in Ethiopia raised a number of problems. Non-government organizations (NGOs) and local governments in Southeast Asia and Latin America first developed the concept of social accountability and a related set of practices. Social accountability has since been adopted and used by numerous civil society actors in a great number of different countries and contexts.
