By tracing intertextual shifts in policy over time, I examine how discourse is constructed in particular ways within the same institution, at different times. I look at the ways in which the construction of EFA by the World Bank can be compared and contrasted between 2001 and 2007. Guiding my inquiry are considerations of how education has been linked to economic rationality and has become understood as a means through which to improve well-being, particularly for those who are from lower income states. The questions that have guided my inquiry are as follows: How is it that education comes to be exercised as a tool for integration in the international political economy? What type of knowledge informs the creation of the key documents and how are the appropriate ends, as constructed by the particular form of knowledge, manifested in EFA documents? / Theoretical, International and Cultural Studies in Education

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This study attempts to ascertain the role of the World Bank and its problematical issues in Balkan countries. The foreign aid holds a key impact in these economies, but on the other hand it embraces a controversial aspect. The contradictory role of the World Bank lies in aid ineffectiveness at reducing poverty and sustaining economic growth. The foreign aid inflows did not manage to fulfill its objectives efficiently, since they created income inequalities in the region favoring distinctive economies. Corruption and bad-governmental management would expand the controversially further. Additionally, the study analyzes the impact of aid on economic growth empirically using a panel data set comprising of five Balkan economies during 2000-2010 period. We find negative and significant evidence of aid impact on growth. Moreover, the relation between governance and growth resulted positive. Results display a clear framework of aid ineffectively across the region. The Balkan countries should therefore focus on a better effective management of the World Bank aid to reduce poverty, income inequality and to achieve the economic growth.

The dissertation investigates support by economists for the global policy shift away from unfunded public pension schemes towards funded private pension schemes. Influential economists and institutions, including the World Bank, present a suite of economic arguments that suggest that this shift will have positive effects on national economies, particularly in the context of aging. The arguments may be categorised according to their relation to the operation of three sets of institutions: capital markets, labour markets and political systems. In capital markets, the transition is purported to increase private and national saving, increase the quantity and quality of investment, and provide more efficient private administration. In labour markets, it is claimed that the shift will reduce labour market distortions associated with public pensions, which inhibit competitiveness, produce unemployment and encourage early retirement. According to the World Bank, public pensions systems cause these distortions without achieving their stated objective of reducing inequality. In the political sphere, the shift is purported to insulate the pension system from political pressures, which otherwise inevitably lead to crisis. The thesis provides evidence which refutes these claims. The best research, including studies by orthodox economists, indicate that the shift does not increase savings or investment, or improve the quality of financial investment. The main effect of tax concessions associated with private pension systems is to divert to private pension funds savings that would occur in any case via other mechanisms. The tax concessions are also regressive, even in systems with compulsory elements. Private administration of pensions, particularly in a plural consumer market setting, is highly inefficient, with customers at a disadvantage in dealing with providers due to the complexity and opacity of products and pricing. A negative relationship is found between public pension spending and levels of elderly poverty, suggesting that reducing public pension spending increases levels of elderly inequality. Public pensions are found not to explain differences in economic growth between regions. Elements of system design which distort labour markets, such as by encouraging early retirement, can easily be adjusted. However, such elements are explicit government policy in several countries. A review of public and private pensions finds that examples of public system crisis are associated with instances of economic and political collapse, rather than system design. Private funded systems are found to be more vulnerable, not less, to the same external influences. Relatively generous universal public pension systems are found to be financially sustainable despite demographic change, assuming modest levels of economic growth.

The dissertation investigates support by economists for the global policy shift away from unfunded public pension schemes towards funded private pension schemes. Influential economists and institutions, including the World Bank, present a suite of economic arguments that suggest that this shift will have positive effects on national economies, particularly in the context of aging. The arguments may be categorised according to their relation to the operation of three sets of institutions: capital markets, labour markets and political systems. In capital markets, the transition is purported to increase private and national saving, increase the quantity and quality of investment, and provide more efficient private administration. In labour markets, it is claimed that the shift will reduce labour market distortions associated with public pensions, which inhibit competitiveness, produce unemployment and encourage early retirement. According to the World Bank, public pensions systems cause these distortions without achieving their stated objective of reducing inequality. In the political sphere, the shift is purported to insulate the pension system from political pressures, which otherwise inevitably lead to crisis. The thesis provides evidence which refutes these claims. The best research, including studies by orthodox economists, indicate that the shift does not increase savings or investment, or improve the quality of financial investment. The main effect of tax concessions associated with private pension systems is to divert to private pension funds savings that would occur in any case via other mechanisms. The tax concessions are also regressive, even in systems with compulsory elements. Private administration of pensions, particularly in a plural consumer market setting, is highly inefficient, with customers at a disadvantage in dealing with providers due to the complexity and opacity of products and pricing. A negative relationship is found between public pension spending and levels of elderly poverty, suggesting that reducing public pension spending increases levels of elderly inequality. Public pensions are found not to explain differences in economic growth between regions. Elements of system design which distort labour markets, such as by encouraging early retirement, can easily be adjusted. However, such elements are explicit government policy in several countries. A review of public and private pensions finds that examples of public system crisis are associated with instances of economic and political collapse, rather than system design. Private funded systems are found to be more vulnerable, not less, to the same external influences. Relatively generous universal public pension systems are found to be financially sustainable despite demographic change, assuming modest levels of economic growth.

Over the past thirty years, the World Bank has intensified its activities relating to education in developing countries. Notable developments in the World Bank’s policy on education include promotion of “innovative delivery”, which refers to the use of new and existing Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in education. The World Bank claims that the unique characteristics of ICTs have the potential to produce new forms of delivery in higher education that can overcome existing barriers to education and facilitate student-centred learning (World Bank, 1999, 2005). Many forms of innovative delivery, such as distance education and open learning, are not new forms of instruction. However, promotion of innovative delivery as a global priority for education in developing countries is new. In this thesis, I interrogate the World Bank’s assumptions concerning innovative delivery as expressed in their landmark policy statement on education, the 1999 Education Sector Strategy Report (ES99) (World Bank, 1999). I focus on the assumptions that underlie views put forward in the ES99 on the nature of technology and its role in education, the role of innovative delivery in overcoming existing barriers to education, and the potential of innovative delivery to facilitate student-centred learning. A central aim of this thesis was to better understand the socio-cultural and pedagogical issues that may arise when these assumptions are put into practice in different cultural contexts. This was achieved by comparing the assumptions put forward in the ES99 with the reported perceptions of, attitudes toward, and use of ICTs by students and lecturers from three different cultural contexts. Qualitative and quantitative methodologies were used to gather detailed empirical data on end-users’ perceptions, attitudes to and use of online technologies at universities in Australia, Malaysia and the United States. The findings suggested that across all three cultural contexts, respondents’ attitudes were not consistent with the World Bank’s technocratic view of innovative delivery. Moreover, the findings cast doubt on the extent to which technology-mediated education can overcome existing barriers to education and facilitate a student-centred approach to education. I conclude by suggesting that the World Bank needs to adopt a more questioning stance toward the potential effectiveness of innovative delivery. Other findings point to the contextual nature of technology adoption and the pedagogical implications of this mode of delivery across cultural contexts.

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The thesis examines policy making, especially in the shelter sector, from a different perspective: the impact of the macro-level political economy on the micro-level intervention. To establish this relationship more precisely, a conceptual framework which explores the effects of the role and nature of the state, foreign aid (USAID), and economic reform (IMF/World Bank) is utilised. This framework is deployed to investigate the interaction between these three key elements and how they affected shifts and changes in shelter policies in Egypt from the 1950s. By 1952 the government assumed a more central role in service provision with its socialist orientation. On the macro-political level, dramaticc hanges have taken place since then, but, in effect were not mirrored with adequatere form on the structural or organisational levels, with regards to tackling the shelter needs of the country. The core of the thesis explores, from the shelter sector perspective, the role of the state as an interest mediator throughout different periods. This reveals that the shelter sector always formed an important investment priority susceptible to both internal and external determinants. Internal determinants are related to domestic priorities influenced by changes in the social structure, class interests, and resource allocation. External determinants concern the role played by international agencies in promoting development models in which the shelter sector plays an often uncertain role, or direct political pressure as a part of geo-strategic concerns. The state's receptiveness and ability to mediate is constrained by the extent to which external agendas fit or conflict with the state's development ideology, perceptions of equity, social justice and stability. Using an inductive approach, the empirical evidence is drawn from interviews with key figures in policy making as well as independent observers. The thesis argues that in order to provide a refined understanding to the housing question it has to be put in its broader socio-economic and political context. Outcomes have generally been technocratic solutions to a problem that is largely structural in nature. The gap between the political and technocratic levels of policy making and implementation is a central theme in the study. The distinctive responses to the shelter question, from both levels, over four decades in Egypt, and under a highly complex and rapidly changing political environment are reflected in the outcomes. Perceptions, priorities and criteria driving decision making of key actors, and the state's central role in mediating between external and internal interests, as well as its own, were the main themes deployed in the investigation. The findings suggest that policy making is an outcome of the interaction among the needs of the state (especially the autocratic tendencies of the leadership, and the technocrats) and external forces which determine policies according to a different agenda (geo-political): outcomes, therefore, may not be generated by a conscious policy making process, but rather, directly, from political impact. The study also suggests that structural changes in development paradigms do not appear to be the main determinant of policy shifts. A combination of short-term and specific international objectives and national interests of the state appear to be more instrumental in policy shifts and modifications in approaches.