Introduction: The currency of change: World Bank lending and learning in the Wolfensohn era

The World Bank Group is at a critical juncture in its history. The departure of James Wolfensohn as president in mid-2005 and the appointment of Paul Wolfowitz marked a milestone in the Group’s history. This transition represents an ideal opportunity to reflect on the legacy of the initiatives and reforms undertaken during the previous decade that continue to direct many existing trajectories in development policy. James Wolfensohn’s ten-year tenure as president of the World Bank was a period where the organization was under the increasingly intense scrutiny of the international community. The decade saw ‘radical changes’ in thinking about development policy, in which the ideas and policy prescriptions from the 1980s were being increasingly questioned (Gilbert and Vines 2000). This was not only due to greater pressures from dominant shareholders and a growing array of stakeholders, it was also a time of internal institutional soul searching with the reforms and evaluations that responded to and reflected the implacable problems of ameliorating poverty and generating growth and development.