The Multilateral Development Banks: Improving U.S. Leadership [The Washington Papers 178]

"A sound research effort that catalogs the problems and provides a sensible review of the means to rectify them. This volume is better than most on the internal management problems of U.S. agencies overseeing MDBs."-Thomas J. Duesterberg former Director and Senior Fellow Hudson Institute Washington D.C. "Barbara Upton has given us a timely, well-researched study of why U.S. policy toward the World Bank and other aid-related multilateral organizations is so muddled and hard to change. It is must reading for any incoming administration in 2001 that wants to have an effective, coherent approach toward managing U.S. interests in these institutions."-James B. Burnham Murrin Professor of Business Duquesne University U.S. Executive Director World Bank Group "A trenchant, timely analysis of the steady weakening of the U.S. position in the international financial institutions, complemented by sound proposals to remedy the situation in U.S. government policymaking circles and, by extensive, to fix the problems within the World Bank and its sister regional banks. The author had a unique combination of insider knowledge and outsider irreverence--you can't do better for ideas to update 50-year-old policies for the twenty-first century."-Richard E. Bissell Chairman World Bank Inspection Panel "An incisive, much-needed analysis of the need for greater U.S. government attention to the actual results on the ground of World Bank and other multilateral development bank (MDB) programs. Upton's well-documented study exposes the gap between the MDB's development rhetoric and their too often poor operational performance. It makes clear that a good part of the responsibility for conflicting MDB priorities lies with the banks' larger shareholders, especially the United States."-Bruce Rich Director International Programs Environmental Defense Fund Author of Mortgaging the Earth