Topic Modeling of the World Bank Group’s Evaluation Reports from 2001 to 2017

• In Event: 4366 - Section on Global and Transnational Sociology Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 5. Global and Transnational Knowledge Production

Abstract

How does the discussion of international development change over time? How does the focus and frame of intergovernmental organizations focused on development evolve? We address these questions by analyzing 1,000 annual reports compiled by the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) of the World Bank during the period, 2001-2017. We use a topic modeling, an increasingly popular model for classifying a massive scale of documents and understanding what the coverage reveals. Specifically we seek to compare how IEG has portrayed the core identities and activities of the World Bank with a more generation description of what values and ideals the World Bank pursues in other publications, including the World Bank’s annual report. Our analyses show that topics on ‘urban-rural development’ increased, but a topic related to ‘public sector’ decreased, consistent with the pattern identified in the World Bank's annual reports. The results also show that 1) discussions of ‘social and environmental issues’ remain low and 2) the concept of civil society never makes it to the top lists of developmental themes, suggesting the existence of potential discrepancy between international norms and real activities the Work Bank pursues. This paper seeks to contribute to discussions of the future direction of research for international development and/or international development cooperation and the need to diversify methodological approaches.

Authors

• Seong-Gwon Cho

• Jeong-Woo Koo, Sungkyunkwan University