The Unintended Consequences of the World Bank’s Policy Recommendations on the Education Domestic Coalitions in Colombia

What happens when influential international organizations change their beliefs about social policy? Do they effectively use their power to transfer their learning and change domestic decisions? This paper answers these questions through the analysis of the learning process about vocational secondary education in the World Bank, and its influence on Colombian policy. In the 1960s, the World Bank widely supported the expansion of vocational schools in developing countries. The Colombian government in turn embraced enthusiastically the World Bank’s assistance and recommendations. These schools however, did not provide the expected contributions to human capital. Employers considered them inadequate either because students were not properly trained or because such training raised salary expectations in an economy that deeply relied on low salaries. Nevertheless, Colombian vocational schools quickly nurtured new constituents: 1) teacher unions who regard vocational teachers as allies to increase their power, 2) low-income families whose demands for education were tracked into this type of schools, and 3) politicians who gained popular support from the implementation of public vocational schools. Therefore, in the 1980s, when the World Bank changed its ideas and assessed vocational schooling as inefficient, suspended associated loans and technical assistance, and actively disseminated the limitations of vocational education, the Colombian government was not able to adopt the new recommendations and faced a strong resistance from the coalition supporting vocational schools. This study ultimately shows that domestic coalitions that emerged from the implementation of past global norms will not easily embrace changes when international organizations radically change their policy ideas. In other words, while global ideas implemented in a particular country can actually shape domestic political coalitions, these coalitions may have later unintended consequences that affect the influence of powerful international actors and constrain policy change.