THE LIMITATIONS OF THE WORLD-BANK CONCEPTION OF THE STATE AND THE IMPLICATIONS FOR INSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES

WDR97 has reinstated firmly on the international agenda the role of th e state in development - not with notions of the state as the chief en gine of growth, but with notions of the state as a set of institutions required to provide a framework for private sector development and th e proper functioning of the market. The emphasis in the Report is on h ow to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the state in this co ntext. What is required to complement the analyses in the Report is a better understanding of the variety of ways in which different stales are embedded in societies; a broader understanding of the non-economic roles of slates; more attention to the social biases embodied in most institutional arrangements; and the need for democratisation, not sim ply to improve performance in the economic sense, but rather to improv e performance in a political sense - to promote participation for all adult citizens and responsiveness, transparency and accountability on the part of the public authorities.