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Global Competition, Uneven and Combined Development, and Regulatory Reforms: a critical analysis of the World Bank's Doing Business ranking | Competição Global, Desenvolvimento Desigual e Combinado e Reformas Regulatórias: uma análise crítica do ranking Doing Business do Banco Mundial

2024; UNIVERSIDADE DO ESTADO DO RIO DE JANEIRO; Volume: 15; Linguagem: Inglês

10.12957/rmi.2024.86378

2446-6182

Tiago Santos,

International Development and Aid

In the last 30 years, performance indicators such as international rankings have gained relevance and influence in Global Development Governance. Mostly hosted by organizations from the North, these instruments have been noted for their ability to shape the behavior of states and induce reforms in a variety of areas. In this article, I focus on the World Bank Doing Business (DB) ranking, a tool responsible for inducing thousands of reforms in the regulatory environment of several economies in the South. Drawing on the Uneven and Combined Development (U&CD) approach, I analyze the origins, functioning and contradictions surrounding this tool. I argue that, while promoting a development perspective based on the neoliberal paradigm of deregulation and global competition, the Doing Business suggests a poor and ahistorical view of the International, which is also incapable of recognizing the nature of the inequality between central and peripheral states under global capitalism.