| The World Bank today views itself as a development institution, an agent of change. This self-conception represents a departure from the Bank's original view of itself and its job, for the International Bank of the 1950's and 1960's was not a development bank. In its first two decades of "conventional" behavior, it was a financial institution that lent its support to bankable projects. In that period, the World Bank considered development in economic terms as measured by the rate of GNP growth.;That a financial institution as orthodox in origin as the World Bank should have evolved in the direction of a development institution is testimony to the impact on international politics during the past third of a century of equality between nations, not just in the legal sense, but in the socio-economic sense as well. The World Bank's preoccupation with so elusive a variable as population in relation to the development process is a striking indication of this new emphasis in international relations.;Furthermore, this dissertation concerns the ways in which banking procedures have been adapted to the attainment of an objective normally regarded as alien to a bank's proper function. The Bank has employed its financial power to induce and reward measures designed by governments to slow population growth. Indirectly, it has employed its prestige and expertise to promote awareness of the importance of population as a factor in the development process.;Gradually, however, responding to the changing environment of world politics and to the initiative of Mr. McNamara, the Bank's president since 1968, the Bank has moved in the direction of a development institution. The shift is reflected in the policy statements of successive presidents, especially of Mr. McNamara, and in changing spending patterns aimed at rural development, education, and health, with particular emphasis, however, on retardation of population growth. The singling out of the population variable is the hallmark of the McNamara presidency. |
