ABSTRACT
The top-down, expert-oriented approach to lending criticized by Charles Kindleberger in the early 1950s has been a key feature of the Bank’s organizational culture throughout its history. Development projects are generally formulated by Bank staff, most of them working out of the Bank’s Washington headquarters, and then presented to representatives of the borrowing country government. The technical expertise needed to advise countries on these projects is believed to reside primarily within the Bank or among the host of consultants it hires. And the strategies advocated by the Bank, while not as “one size fits all” as in the past, embody fixed assumptions about the kind of policies a developing country should follow in order to advance.
