European Union, the World Bank and the Policymaking of Aid

Based on the experience of the author, an IPE scholar and former trade policy consultant at the World Bank (WB), the book offers an in-depth exploration of the EU–WB relations, conceptualized as hybrid delegation.

Coupling cross-time analyses of their interaction in the regions of the Middle East and North Africa, Europe and Central Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa with an original investigation on the coordination among the EU member states at the Executive Board of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development over the ‘voice and participation reform’ of 2008–2010, the book advances an innovative theoretical framework to assess the EU–WB joint institutional and field policy performances. Augmented PA models of delegation, role theory and performance analyses are engaged, and selectively recombined, to investigate the nature, evolution and impact of the interactions of the two organizations, both in their everyday and constituent politics. Hybrid delegation-in-motion is reconstructed, against the background of post-Washington Consensus and post-Lisbon EU, to unveil the changing division of labour between the two largest development multilaterals of the new global context.

The book will be of interest to scholars, students and practitioners in European Politics, Development, International Relations, International Political Economy and Global Economic Governance.