Dinosaurs or Dynamos

Both the UN and the World Bank have repeatedly proclaimed their solemn ambitions to improve the lot of humankind. Dinosaurs or Dynamos? explores how much, and what, they can really be expected to do. The volume focuses on the functions that the two organizations carry out and the governing structures that underlie their activities. The UN development system has ambitions to perform operative tasks for which its structures of decision-making are ill equipped. The World Bank has taken on normative functions --the premier development institution-- that are incompatible with its traditional structures. The authors go on to ask, as if starting from scratch, what need there is for these two MDIs in the next century; which tasks in promoting world development can they undertake that others cannot; what kind of financial support can they expect from major donors?

Helge Ole Bergesen is a political scientist at the University of Oslo, Norway, and Senior Research Fellow at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute at Lysaker.