Focuses on how to incorporate social and political dimensions into the World Bank's lending programme and thereby promote equitable, sustainable and participatory development. Comprises six papers which discuss three alternative strategies to the World Bank's current structural adjustment policies. The essays deal with: the efficacy of World Bank and IMF contributions to African development; a critique of structural adjustment programmes and a proposal for an alternative adjustment package; the World Bank's focus on poverty; the use of social and environmental impact assessment in allocating development loans; the incorporation of human rights and good governance criteria into the operations of international financial institutions; and foreign assistance as a catalyst for domestic cross-class coalition building.