Under President Ajay Banga, the World Bank Group launched a corporate scorecard and a year later created an outcomes department — a commitment to ensure that its roughly $90 billion in annual disbursements translate into meaningful impact.
Yet even well-intentioned bureaucracies often drift into “isomorphic mimicry,” in the words of Lant Pritchett et al: Adopting the language of reform without the underlying behavioral and institutional shifts.
As one of the most influential players in international development, how the World Bank fares will reverberate widely. Two years since the scorecard launched, are these reforms translating into substantive changes?