The World Bank Group, the AIIB and Knowledge Contests about Infrastructure

A diverse range of scholarship portrays contemporary international organisations (IOs) as promoters of the neoliberal faith. Even if correct, this conventional wisdom presumes an unrealistically high degree of consensus over policy options among IOs. In this paper, I therefore argue that even when two (or more) IOs subscribe to a similar worldview, policy disagreements are likely to persist for both substantive and symbolic reasons. Organisations often take diverging stances on which means are best suited to achieve a shared end. In other words, each organisation draws on a unique body of internally validated policy knowledge about why a particular problem persists and how it can best be solved. At the same time, such knowledge contests serve important symbolic functions. In particular, they can signify demarcation efforts, which are vital when overlapping responsibilities on some issues are enshrined in organisational mandates or have developed through organisational practices. Drawing on preliminary interviews and document analysis, I explore these two dimensions in the field of global infrastructure investment, where the World Bank Group has been increasingly rivalled by the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Knowledge contests between the World Bank Group and the AIIB show how institutionalised overlaps can lead an IO to claim knowledge not only for knowledge’s sake but also for visible differentiation from another IO with cognate tasks.