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Paper short abstract:

This paper compares the past performance of the UN and the World Bank in supporting development and considers their future roles in support of the SDGs and the broader challenges of global governance in the 21st century

Paper long abstract:

At the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference, the clear intention was for the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to be integral parts of the United Nations, under the authority of the UN secretary-general. Nonetheless, powerful US voices were determined that that the UN was never going to tell the World Bank or the IMF what to do. This resulted in de facto though not de jure separation. The tension between the formal UN status and the de facto operational independence of the IMF and the World Bank has been a constant feature of the international scene ever since.

Much has been lost over the years because of this separation, although how much depends on whether one believes that closer relations would have brought broader UN ideas and economic thinking on development into the Bretton Woods Institutions or, in contrast, limited their creation and adoption within the UN itself. This also depends, of course, on one's overall assessment of the focus and quality of the UN's development work in comparison with that of the World Bank and the IMF, as well as what the impact would have been on the volume of (concessional) resources for development both institutions were able to raise. This paper will reflect on these issues as well as on whether in the next decades of the twenty-first century, closer relations can help both institutions support the SDGs and meet better the new and fundamental challenges facing the world.