%0 Journal Article
%T The World Bank and the Building of Local Institutionality in Senegal: A Path toward Municipal Adjustment
%A Mebometa Ndongo
%A Juan-Luis Klein
%J Urban Studies Research
%D 2013
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2013/301068
%X This paper examines the impacts of municipal adjustment strategies on territorial governance in Africa, with specific reference to Senegal, as the result of the action of the World Bank. The paper identifies the process through which the World Bank is reconfiguring the system of actors and changing the local institutional environment to embody its philosophy of governance modernization. The paper shows how the local actor is brought to contribute to the new focus on governance and the reshaping of local institutions, which together comprise a type of urban development that aligns with the tenets of globalization. 1. Introduction This paper focuses on the governance model crafted by the World Bank (hereafter referred to as ¡°the Bank¡±) for Senegal which involved the implementation of a variety of urban development projects. The activities of this model have an impact on the existing organizational dynamics within a given territorial context and are designed and deployed in keeping with the development paradigm adhered to by the Bank [1]. This deployment creates favourable conditions for a western type of institution building, namely, in that it makes local actors a driving force of the aforementioned building. £¿By replicating external policies and implementing development projects conceived by the Bank, these local actors participate in the creation of spaces where a new institutional geography is instituted and mainstreamed to conform to the western neoliberal ideology. More specifically, the new local institutionality ([2], page 215) took shape as a result of the implementation of the Bank¡¯s municipal adjustment processes and the territorialized version of its structural adjustment programs. As has been well documented, the latter are more likely to disrupt historically anchored politicoadministrative structures than to achieve their purported purpose of improving the living conditions of citizens. In this paper, we demonstrate the dramatic negative impacts of this governance model on the basis of eight interrelated urban projects launched from 1972 on. A close reading of documented facts issued by the Bank and write-ups associated with these projects make it possible to map out the evolution of resulting transformations. Section 2 of the paper outlines the research problem and provides a synthesis of the criticisms formulated in the scientific literature about the Bank¡¯s development projects. Section 3 highlights conceptual references that focus on an analysis of the process of institution building embodying the application of the Bank¡¯s projects.
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/usr/2013/301068/