Elegantes Telefax - JAV der TUB - TU Berlin

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formance gap. Considerable attention has gained the question related to environmental
performance as a result of environmental policy changes in the World Bank,
but the question has not been applied to the water resources sector of the Bank.
This article raises the question how the World Bank has developed and adopted
the concept of Integrated Water Resource Management and the question whether
and if yes to what extent the water policies of the World Bank have changed in the
first half of this decade towards a more infrastructure-building orientation and how
these changes can be explained. Here, the article employs the analytical concept of
the principal-agent relationship to which the environmental NGOs play the role of a
lobbying third party. The adoption of IWRM has to be seen in the context of the overall
integration of environmental considerations in the lending activities of the World
Bank. Because of the prominent role of dams as a focusing type of project for NGO
campaigning against the environmentally damaging effects of World Bank lending,
the position of the World Bank on lending for dams is an import indicator for policy
changes. While the research on the environmental policies of the World Bank in general
moves on the question of measuring and explaining the effectiveness of these
policies, this article focuses on the content and process of various policy formulations
which are important for water resource management: Two internally controlled processes,
resulting in the Water Resources Management Policy Paper in 1993 and the
2004 Water Resources Sector Strategy are contrasted to the Bank assisted, but external
process of the World Commission on Dams. Here, the question is pursued to
what extent and by what means NGOs managed to influence the policy formulation
process.
The article starts with the description of the analytical framework, the principalagent
model, and then it surveys the literature applying the model to international
organizations in development cooperation. Here, the specific features of the delegation
chain between the taxpayer in donor countries at the beginning and the beneficiaries
in the borrowing countries at the end are analyzed and how these features and
the attempts of the principals to control their agents influence aid delivery. This process
of a delegating in multiple steps results in an unavoidable degree of agent slippage
which is considered to be the price to be paid for the delegation by the principal.
The analytical framework is then applied to the analysis of the governance of the
World Bank. Here, the issue of the relative autonomy of the World Bank as an agent
is raised based on the high share of refinancing by international capital markets and
the specific mechanisms to control and influence the World Bank as an agent are
analyzed. Next, the paper summarizes the (empirical) research about the inclusion of
general environmental objectives into the governance of the World Bank and the mechanisms
employed to bring about this change of behavior of the World Bank.