Bretton Woods Project
The Bretton Woods Project (BWP) was established by a group of British non-governmental organisations in 1995 to scrutinise the policies and activities of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund and to ‘challenge their power, open policy space, and promote alternative approaches’.
BWP ‘envisions a global economic system that operates on the primary principles of justice, equity, human rights and environmental sustainability, with international institutions that are democratic, transparent, accountable, and responsive to the poorest and most vulnerable citizens’.
Public World’s most recent partnership with BWP has been around the World Bank’s 2013 World Development Report on Jobs. Our MD Brendan Martin wrote a commentary about it for the BWP, which you can download here.
We first worked with BWP shortly after its foundation when its representatives asked Brendan to present critiques of the Bank’s privatisation and public sector reform policies at dialogue meetings between global development NGOs and the World Bank in Washington.
We were then commissioned to write a booklet, New Leaf or Fig Leaf? The challenge of the new Washington Consensus, as a contribution to the debate sparked by then World Bank chief economist Joseph Stiglitz about the ‘Washington Consensus’ package of policies.
More recently we have contributed another publication to BWP — At The Crossroads: Which way for the World Bank’s transport strategy? — taking a critical look at the Bank’s evaluation of its work in transport and its plans for the future.