This paper provides a political-sociological analysis of welfare policy proposals by the World Bank for the last three decades. Through a systematic analysis of World Bank social policy documents since 1980, we conclude that the World Bank has significantly considered the containment of social unrest and mobilization of popular support in its proposals of social assistance programmes. Although the World Bank has proclaimed a political non-interference and exclusive emphasis on structural factors, the Bank is in fact politically conscious and cautious and has been following the global trend of politicization of poverty reduction since the 2000s. In order to examine whether and to what extent the World Bank has considered political factors, the authors analyzed a set of 384 World Bank publications using a key word search strategy. The article presents a mixture of content and pattern analyses of these policy documents. The authors found that one quarter of all documents have an explicit mention of social unrest and popular politics. Specifically, we demonstrate that the threat of social unrest in poor areas and regions has becomes a critical issue for the Bank. 39 documents referred to social assistance as a tool for political mobilization and 51 publications mentioned the use of welfare programmes as a means to political containment. Furthermore, the majority of these politics-related documents have been published during the 2000s, indicating that the World Bank has indeed followed an upward trend in the politicization of poverty reduction policies. The main conclusion is that the containment of social unrest and mobilization of popular support have increasingly become key factors for the World Bank to make social assistance programme proposals.
