The United States, the World Bank, and the Challenges of International Development in the 1970s

Abstract

This paper examines the tumultuous relationship between the World Bank and the U.S. government during the 1970s. Drawing on previously untapped documents from the bank archives, it details the rise of U.S. opposition to the bank in the 1970s and describes the resistance by the bank’s president, former U.S. secretary of defense Robert McNamara, to American efforts to influence the organization during the time. A study of the bank’s relationship with Chile in the early 1970s demonstrates how the organization’s behavior was guided as much by internal factors — in this case a desire to maintain its creditworthiness — as it was the result of pressure from the U.S. government. Nevertheless, the article concludes that U.S. support remained critical to the bank and, as such, the organization’s autonomy was significantly bounded.