The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development: Constructing the periphery of the European political economy

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is not a regional development bank in the way that we might traditionally think of such institutions. This chapter sets out to explore what the implications of this might be in the context of two of the major themes that structure this edited volume: market promotion and regional integration. The chapter does this by outlining briefly the significance of the historical context of the constitutive moment when the EBRD was established. The chapter then utilizes these broad heuristics to analyse the social and intellectual context of transition amid the four policy shifts in the EBRD at various critical historical junctures: (1) Initial market construction; (2) institutional shock therapy; (3) the promotion of neoliberal competitiveness; and then (4) post-crisis re-invigoration; before offering some reflections on the EBRD as regional development bank within the wider framing of the principal agent problem.