The article examines the history of the World Bank from the first negotiations between the United States and Great Britain for the design of a new post-war economic world order until his 50th anniversary. It argues that, despite the technical forefront and in different forms, the Bank has always worked at the interface of international political, economic and intellectual fields, due to its singular condition as lender, political actor and disseminator of ideas and prescriptions on capitalist development in an Anglo-Saxon clef. Accordingly, from the outset, the Bank used credit as leverage to extend its influence and institutionalize economic ideas, worldviews and policy prescriptions in client states. Based on extensive and diverse international literature, and on World Bank's own sources, the article addresses the issue taking into account, in an articulated manner, the political economy in which the institution operated and its functioning as a complex bureaucracy.
World Bank; Bretton Woods; United States; multilateralism; development