of foreign aid, and reinforcing the role of the Brookings Institution as the leading think-tank on the relations between foreign aid and the economic, social, and political conditions of developing countries.<sup>12</sup> The role of the World Bank was of course fundamental in this research program. The first history of the World Bank would be published in 1973 by Brookings (Mason and Asher 1973).<sup>13</sup> The relations between the two institutions – Brookings and the Bank – were strengthened by their common location in Washington, D.C. In addition, their top managers belonged to the same intellectual and social milieu: an élite of development practitioners and intellectuals, who worked in different organizations but were part of the same social networks and circles, whether informal or formal (e.g. the Society for International Development).<sup>14</sup> Another equally fundamental part of the research was a detailed study of the impact of selected World Bank projects on the social and economic structure of client countries, that is, the study originally proposed by Albert Hirschman.

The principal purpose of Hirschman’s study was, in his words, “to explore in detail the direct effects as well as the broad repercussions of a project on economy and society,” as well as to reach “some improvements in the process of project evaluation and selection.”<sup>15</sup> The aim was to gain a deep understanding of the salient features of a project, both at the planning stage and after its completion. The fact that Hirschman chose to analyze projects financed by the World Bank was not unexpected; the Bank’s twenty-year-long experience constituted “the most ample, varied, and detailed source of information and documentation in this area” (Hirschman 1967a, p. 1). Also, none of the selected projects had developed without encountering serious problems. Therefore, this sample – albeit limited in number – could prove useful to the goal of building generalizations about the problems arising in project lending. More fundamentally, as Hirschman later put it, a comparison of the different projects would highlight similarities and differences in project experience, so as to inquire whether they could “be traced to what [...] may be called their ‘structural characteristics’” (Hirschman 1967a, p. 4). These structural

> 11 Harold Larsen to Files, “Hirschman Study”, May 22, 1964, World Bank Hirschman Folders Vol. 1; Albert O. Hirschman to Mr. Marshall A. Robinson, June 22, 1964, World Bank Hirschman Folders Vol. 1; Marshall A. Robinson to Professor Albert O. Hirschman, December 12, 1963, Albert O. Hirschman Papers, Box 57, Folder 5. 12 The Brookings Institution, Division of Foreign Policy Studies, “Proposal for a Program of Studies Dealing with American Foreign Assistance”, April 1964 (Revised), World Bank Hirschman Folders Vol. 1. 13 In the already cited Brookings proposal for a research program, it was noted that “a serious [World Bank’s] independent history and appraisal has yet to be issued,” The Brookings Institution, Division of Foreign Policy Studies, “Proposal for a Program of Studies Dealing with American Foreign Assistance”, April 1964 (Revised), p. 16, World Bank Hirschman Folders Vol. 1.

> 14 For an assessment of the role of the Society for International Development as a development network, see Asher 1982, Rice 1982, and Alacevich 2007.

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