Conflicts and partnerships in the area of socio-environmental projects

Conflicts and partnerships in the area of socio-environmental projects This article analyzes the clashes over socio-environmental projects financed by the World Bank since the beginning of the 1980s. It focuses in particular on the relationship between the Bank, the American Congress and Federal Government, and NGOs working in the USA. It argues that the Bank responded to external pressures in relation to socio-environmental issues by increasing in size and activities, through a conflictive and continuous process of institutional stretching and incremental change that accommodated these pressures within the dominant paradigm. On the other hand, the confrontation that marked the relations between the Bank and the NGOs through the eighties later gave way to institutional partnerships for the implementations of projects and programs in the wake of the neoliberalization of Nation States.