Introduction
“We Can Do Better” ) was the title of IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva’s speech at the Fund’s annual meetings in October 2024. At first glance, the title, along with the opening lines of her speech, might have alluded to an acknowledgment of harm, mistakes, or perhaps even unintended consequences of IMF policies. However, as the speech unfolded, it quickly became clear that the message was quite the opposite. What Georgieva was actually saying is that the IMF should do more of what it is already doing. The first point she chose to highlight in her domestic agenda, once again, was: “Budgets need to be consolidated, credibly yet gradually in most countries”.
This contrast between the promise of the title, “We Can Do Better”, and the continued insistence on harmful policies encapsulates the core argument of this paper. For over a decade, civil society organizations in the Arab region have been actively advocating for a shift in the policies of International Financial Institutions (IFIs), particularly in relation to austerity, or as the IMF and World Bank call it, “fiscal consolidation”, and its consequences for social policy and social protection systems. These efforts have generated a wealth of data and research that unequivocally demonstrate the devastating impact of IFI-influenced policies, especially on the most marginalized populations. The IMF’s role in the region saw a significant resurgence after the Arab uprisings of 2011. Between 2010 and 2024, the IMF loan agreements in the Arab region amounted to approximately $161 billion. As early as the 2011 IMF-World Bank Spring meetings, the then general director announced the Fund’s full commitment to “helping its member countries from the MENA region to secure their goals of sustainable and inclusive growth, economic stability, job creation and improved living standards”, providing the first tangible indicators of what was to come. The emphasis on inclusive growth and improved living standards in this statement reflects the post-2011 shift in IMF and World Bank discourse in the region, as well as the broader shift in response to the post-2008 global financial crisis. ) Indeed, Momani and Lanz (2014) demonstrate that the focus on sustainable and inclusive growth in IMF discourse and its implications on their discourse around social policy only began to appear in the IMF’s formal communications in the region after the 2011 uprisings. )
While it is undeniable that, in recent years, the discourses of both the IMF and the World Bank have shifted to include issues of inclusive growth, inequality, and social policy, both globally and in the region, the grievances over the detrimental impact of their policies remain, nonetheless, high. This paper examines this discourse, how it functions, and its impact on advocacy actors. Through a discourse analysis, supported by a literature review, a word frequency analysis, and key informant interviews, the paper argues that the discursive transformation of the IMF and World Bank reflects continuity rather than change: while the language has evolved to appear socially responsive, underlying policy frameworks remain firmly unchanged and neoliberal. The paper further examines how civil society and advocacy actors experience and navigate these shifts, often finding their efforts redirected toward contesting meanings rather than policies. Accordingly, this paper addresses two main questions: What purposes do shifts in IMF and World Bank discourse serve? And how do advocacy actors in the Arab region negotiate and respond to these shifts?
Relevance of Discourse: Why is Language Important?
Although the language used by the IMF and the World Bank has evolved in recent years, this rhetorical shift has not been matched by a substantive transformation in policy. While certain measures have been adjusted over time, these changes do not represent a departure from the broader neoliberal framework that continues to prioritize macroeconomic stabilization. Within this framework, social policy remains largely conceived as a compensatory mechanism rather than as a comprehensive approach grounded in the human right to social security. Since the overall fiscal and macroeconomic framework remains largely unchanged, why is the discourse shifting and to what end? As Beland and Peterson (2015) explain: “The terms, metaphors, and concepts we use are far from innocent and are closely tied to political struggles and international exchanges”. They affirm that in relation to social policy, the study of the words chosen is essential to understanding their political consequences, especially as the IMF and the World Bank are considered “key institutions in the development of an international social policy language”. As the literature indicates, multiple analyses of discursive change within the IMF and the World Bank confirm that a change in discourse has indeed taken place, but that this should be regarded with skepticism. These analyses show that the adoption of a discourse more open to socially oriented policies was accompanied by a reframing of core consensus-related policies, while maintaining their centrality. In this sense, the underlying economic assumptions have remained the same; discourse change has been employed as a legitimizing strategy, while social policy has been instrumentalized and reduced to market-correction policies that serve neoliberal macroeconomic objectives.
Several studies have been undertaken that explicitly aim to investigate the nature of discursive change and test its impact on social policy within the IMF and World Bank. In their study, Kaya and Reay (2019) examine the evolution of discourse related to the Washington Consensus within the IMF by conducting a content analysis of approximately 1,200 IMF documents from 1982 to 2011. They identified a set of market-oriented policy instruments associated with the Washington Consensus, along with another set of “socially oriented, market-moderating” dimensions, reflecting what Rodrik (2006) termed the shift toward an “augmented consensus”, defined as an evolved form of the Washington Consensus that adds social and institutional reforms to market-oriented policies. Their study demonstrates that this shift was intrinsically fragmented and significantly influenced by the criticism the IMF faced following the failure of consensus-driven policies in various countries during the 1980s and 1990s (e.g., Mexico, East Asia, Brazil, Russia, and developments in Africa after the 1980s loan programs). Despite the supposed re-emphasis on social development, the “augmented consensus” still included market-oriented elements such as labor market liberalization, independent central banking, and capital account liberalization. This suggests that, even as the IMF adopted a discourse more open to socially oriented, market-moderating approaches, it simultaneously reframed core consensus instruments while maintaining their central role in policy design. Change was thus limited to the introduction of new instruments within the same overarching economic framework, maintaining the view of social policy primarily as an economic tool. Similarly, Vetterlein (2015) examines the evolution of development discourse and social policy language within both the IMF and World Bank. Vetterlein concludes that although this language has significantly evolved over time, “the underlying assumptions guiding policy development have remained stable”. ) Rather than adopting a counter-discourse that lays the foundation for a more holistic development approach, the overall strategy has remained rooted in an econocentric framework. The study also shows that the emerging discourse around “partnership” and “ownership” serves as a strategic tool to shift responsibility for policy failures onto states, thereby serving as a legitimizing strategy for both institutions. These findings are corroborated in Farnworth and Irving’s (2014) discourse analysis of the speeches of the six previous IMF general directors covering the period between 1987 and 2014. Their study confirms that even though the IMF has incorporated inclusive growth into its discourse more prominently since the 2008 financial crisis, this shift remains superficial, and economic growth in its traditional neoliberal dimension remains a priority. As they argue, authentic commitment to inclusive growth requires a deeper commitment to comprehensive social policy and a move away from the instrumental approach that “relegates social policy to market-correction measures in support of economic objectives”. )
In the Arab region, Sherry’s (2017) analysis of IMF conditionality and policy advice in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Tunisia reveals a significant disconnect between the institution’s public rhetoric and its policy design, supporting skepticism about claims that the IMF has shifted away from its neoliberal legacy. This discrepancy is especially evident in the Fund’s treatment of social policy, which remains vague and underdeveloped compared to the specificity and clarity found in its fiscal and monetary policy recommendations. While the IMF establishes detailed and measurable targets for macroeconomic indicators, its guidance on social policy lacks such precision. Sherry’s study further illustrates that in these countries, the core strategies and loan frameworks of both the World Bank and IMF consistently emphasize private-sector-led growth, fiscal austerity, particularly through reforms to subsidies and pensions, and the liberalization of labor and financial markets. Within this dominant economic framework, social objectives are acknowledged but primarily serve to support and legitimize the broader neoliberal agenda. In this context, the role of social policy discourse is reduced to a tool for reinforcing macroeconomic reforms. As Hanieh (2014) finds, IMF and World Bank documents from the region reveal a recognition of widespread public distrust, and they strategically deploy language around poverty reduction, job creation, and transparency in an effort to maintain legitimacy and continuity amid social and political skepticism.
Research on IFI’s roles and their impact on social protection and social policy in the region is extensive. However, this paper addresses a specific gap by moving beyond technical, economic, and social outcomes to analyze the language of development and its purpose. While previous studies have alluded to rhetoric, few have utilized advanced tools for comprehensive discourse analysis. This paper aims to provide critical insights that go beyond mere impact, fostering a deeper understanding of the political dynamics inherent in this technical conversation.
Methodology
This paper adopts a discourse analysis approach, supported by a literature review, a word-frequency-based coding exercise, and insights from key informant interviews. The paper employs these different sources to inform and contextualize a discourse analysis of IMF and World Bank communications in and about the region.
Discourse analysis is understood here both as a theoretical lens and a methodological tool. Theoretically, discourse analysis is considered essential as the paper adopts the view that language constructs meaning and is used to legitimize certain policy pathways. In that sense, critical discourse analysis attempts to understand the inherent power play in language and the use of language in emphasizing and legitimizing dominant economic paradigms. Methodologically, it analyzes patterns, shifts, and strategic uses of terminology across time. This allows us to understand institutional and ideological priorities, changes over time, and how these are reflected in linguistic patterns.
The analysis begins with a comprehensive literature review examining the evolution of International Financial Institutions’ (IFIs) discourse, their historical and contemporary role in the MENA region, and civil society organization (CSO)-led research on IFI influence on social policy and social protection narratives. The literature review informed the initial conceptual framing of the codes used in the discourse analysis.
In addition, the study draws on seven key informant interviews conducted with experts and practitioners from the region. These interviews capture both technical and advocacy perspectives, offering insights into how IFI discourse and interventions are perceived and interpreted by regional actors. The interviews are not used to make claims about representativeness. Rather, they serve to inform and contextualize the discourse analysis by shedding light on how certain terminologies are commonly interpreted, how linguistic shifts are perceived by actors engaging with IFIs, and which terms hold specific importance or impact in advocacy efforts. The interviews, therefore, support the development and refinement of the coding categories rather than functioning as an independent dataset for assessing the effects of discourse.
The word frequency analysis was implemented using the NVivo software. Before running the analysis, all materials were gathered through publicly accessible IFI archives. All IMF publications (Regional Economic Outlooks and World Economic Outlooks) and World Bank Annual Reports used in the dataset are available online through their respective institutional websites. The codes used in the analysis were developed inductively from two sources: (1) themes and terms identified in the literature review, and (2) terminologies repeatedly highlighted by interviewees as significant markers of IFI discourse. These codes do not represent word counts alone; they correspond to concepts that signal broader ideological frames, such as austerity, liberalization, safety nets, and governance. Once established, these codes guided the selection of terms for NVivo queries, which were used to detect general trends and recurring themes over time.
The discourse analysis draws on two sets of institutional publications, one from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the other from the World Bank Group, covering different time periods and document types. The IMF dataset includes the Regional Economic Outlook reports for the MENA region, from 2005 to 2025. The World Bank dataset is based on the institution’s Annual Reports, which offer a consistent and comparable source of policy framing and institutional language over time. The analysis includes all available World Bank Annual Reports from 2005 to 2024, ensuring comparability across years due to the standardized structure and reporting format of these documents.
The examined terminologies include: Austerity, Climate, Consolidation, Deregulation, Economic Growth, Energy Subsidies, Fiscal Consolidation, Fiscal Discipline, Fiscal Sustainability, Food Security, Fuel Subsidies, Gender, Governance, Growth, Inequality, Inflation, Labor Market, Liberalization, Monetary Policy, Poverty, Privatization, Productivity, Public Expenditure, Public Investment, Public Sector Reform, Rationalization, Safety Net, Social Justice, Social Protection, Social Safety Net, Social Security, Social Spending, Spending Efficiency, Structural Adjustment, and Subsidies.
All interviewees were anonymized and are referenced in the text as “KII-1” through “KII-7”. Each number corresponds to an internal code used by the researcher.
The Evolution and Function of IFI Discourse
The Use of Language as a Tool of Legitimization and Confusion
The word frequency analysis of the IMF’s Regional and World Economic Outlooks and the World Bank’s Annual Reports demonstrates that since 2005, the word “austerity” was not mentioned at all, while the term “fiscal consolidation” was used 227 times, rarely by the World Bank and mainly by the IMF. This simple numerical fact illustrates how the IMF deliberately uses language to make its policies appear “neutral”, “rational”, and hence “unharmful”. This is seen as a proactive tactic, whereas these institutions confuse the consumers/receptors of their language by creating what sounds like technical and even favorable terms, hiding what is widely recognized as harmful policy. The function of this is one of legitimization and confusion. A study by Farnsworth and Irving, which examined the discourse around austerity in all high-level IMF staff speeches between 2004 and 2015, confirms this observation. Their data demonstrates that the IMF barely used “austerity” as a term, but opted for what they described as goal-driven phrases, mainly “fiscal consolidation”, “fiscal responsibility”, “fiscal discipline”, “debt relief”, and “balanced budgets”, with fiscal consolidation being more consistently used in comparison to other terms. As one interviewee explains, “this shifting terminology is not innocent”. Another interviewee noted that as a global movement opposing austerity grew, IFIs began using alternative terms that sounded more technical, neutral, or even positive. For example, “fiscal consolidation” translates into Arabic as “الضبط المالي”. According to KII-3, when someone in Arabic says, “we need fiscal consolidation”, most people would readily agree; after all, it sounds like a sensible response to concerns about corruption and waste. But in fact, such terms refer to something else entirely. The language thus obscures the underlying policies and their social impact. For audiences or publics who don’t necessarily dig deep into what these terms mean from the IFI’s perspective, it is “natural” to receive them as welcomed reform.
The same pattern appears in the IFIs’ framing of labor policy. Instead of adequately describing the deregulating nature of their recommended policy on labor, which results in the loss of job protections and security, the terms they use are labor market liberalization or flexibilization. Here again, terminology sanitizes job insecurity by casting it as flexibility. This has also resonated in the word frequency analysis. While the word deregulation was only mentioned five times in all documents reviewed, the term “liberalization” occurs 51 times, and “flexible” 104 times. A further qualitative analysis of these occurrences confirms that this usage is linked to policies of labor market flexibilization, which entails diminished protections and informalization of labor.
A third example highlighting the legitimization function of IFI’s discourse is their language around income tax. They present “simplifying” personal income tax as an administrative aid or a measure to support tax efficiency and “sound” tax collection strategies. However, in reality, the simplifying approach attacks the redistributive function of progressive taxation, a common demand by CSOs to offer alternatives for expanding fiscal space outside austerity measures. As was argued in one of the interviews: “what they really mean by simplifying tax is making it less progressive”.
These three examples highlight IFI’s discursive approach to three of the most problematic policies: the push toward austerity measures, supporting labor market deregulation, and the adoption of regressive tax policies. It is telling that in addition to what the discourse analysis shows, the experiences of the interviewed experts and activists in the region, who advocate against these policies, highlight a discursive tactic of legitimization in these issues, specifically, as these three policies tend to have the most severe impact on vulnerable communities. In order to legitimize their stance, the IMF and World Bank have employed tactics such as confusing terminology, labeling negative policies as positive, and technicalizing and neutralizing social policies that play a significant political and distributive role, and are considered crucial for combating inequality and upholding social justice.
This maneuver puts proponents of austerity in a position where their advocacy needs to go through multiple phases, with the first phase being explanatory. They begin producing work to confirm what is self-evident to them: that IFIs continue to push for austerity, albeit under different terms. This becomes an essential step in advocacy, as it consumes time and resources, turning the conversation into a debate over perception rather than policy. Even in meetings, IMF officials do not refrain from asking civil society representatives to stop using the term austerity since they claim not to support austerity measures.
Additionally, the discursive confusion in relation to labor market flexibilization might even put advocates for social protection in confrontation with workers themselves, as the prevalence of the IFI’s narrative and its adoption by governments in the region and by mainstream media can convince public perception that flexibilization works in their benefit, as it offers more work opportunities and fights unemployment. However, their discourse never gives enough space to discuss the social costs of “flexibilization” or deregulation. This way, the battle also becomes about proving how flexibilization is harmful and not a positive policy for economic development.
Responsibility Shifting and Narrative Reversal as a Tactic to Mitigate Criticism
In addition to the legitimization function of such discursive tactics, an important point arises that reflects the kind of relationship this attitude toward criticism creates between these IFIs and civil society organizations and activists. When proactive legitimization fails to mitigate critique, the IMF and World Bank resort to the tactic of responsibility shifting and narrative reversal. Rather than admitting harm, IFI representatives deny, reframe, or even redirect blame, making critics appear naïve, misinformed, or emotional while presenting themselves as the objective truth owners. This dynamic functions as a reactive tactic aimed at mitigating criticism without acknowledging wrongdoing.
One form of this practice is terminology coaching, a tactic through which IFI representatives themselves in meetings or public conferences and through written discourse attempt to influence and coach what a certain term means and hence attempt to redirect language around a certain issue. For example, civil society groups often refer to targeted safety nets as “poverty-targeted safety nets”, highlighting their exclusionary design. But Bank officials, on multiple occasions, explicitly advised in meetings “to stop using the term, warning that doing so would undermine their cause, as it does not adequately align with the World Bank’s perspective”. Even though a vast amount of data and research, along with the logic of targeted safety nets, have demonstrated these to be poverty-targeted approaches, World Bank officials intentionally divert the conversation to make the framing sound like the problem, rather than the exclusionary program itself. This reveals a significant narrative gap: while the IMF and World Bank discourse around targeted safety nets often highlights their success in fighting poverty, CSOs, on the other hand, focus extensively on demonstrating how poverty-targeted safety nets fail to reduce inequality and fall short of achieving their intended objectives, especially in countries experiencing protracted crises and conflict-prone conditions. In the analyzed documents, social safety nets are mainly used as an example of poverty alleviation policies funded or supported by the World Bank Group, a policy recommendation to be used instead of subsidies, and as a tool to mitigate the impact of economic scarring and support vulnerable communities. Hence, the discourse around safety nets is indeed a poverty-targeting discourse, and the policy priority is not around building universal social protection systems. However, IFIs still insist on refusing the poverty-targeted nature of these reforms, which is usually seen as misleading by advocacy and research actors in the region, as mentioned by various interviewees. Once again, discussions become mired in debates over terminology, focusing on how to improve targeting rather than questioning the premise of targeting itself. As one interviewee concludes, “Not only have they adopted a term that is deeply flawed and largely rooted in a U.S. context, far from being aligned with human rights, but they’ve also coupled it with an approach that frames the poor and vulnerable as passive recipients. This combination undermines the principle that everyone has a human right to social security while reinforcing a charity-based approach to social protection”.
A more direct form of responsibility shifting is visible in their discourse around ownership. Loan programs are often branded as “IMF-supported” or famously described as “homegrown”. One interviewee comments: “Even though everyone knows that the program is literally conditioned upon meeting the IMF policy reform requirements, IMF representatives insist on emphasizing the sole responsibility of governments over the programs”. Another participant noted: “They often answer us that it is not called an IMF program, it is homegrown. A government program that is supported by the IMF”. A third added: “The term ‘homegrown program’ is misleading. When we raise our criticisms, they respond by saying, ‘We didn’t design this program, your government did.’ So, in their narrative, it’s the government that should be held accountable for any failure”. In reality, CSOs know that the responsibility is shared between the government and the IMF, but a lot of secrecy surrounds the negotiations: “We don’t really know who suggested what and what the discussion entails. And because negotiations with the IMF are often a last resort negotiation, governments often end up suggesting what they know the IMF wants or accepts. In this case, the bargaining power of governments plays a big role”. This rhetorical reallocation of blame creates an illusion of national ownership while concealing the structural power asymmetries that shape these programs.
Another form of responsibility shifting is their dismissal of external evidence. When CSOs or activists present data showing or proving the harmful effect of IFI or World Bank policies ( for example, high exclusion errors in targeted programs), the response tends to discredit the source: “Unless they produce it, they don’t consider it evidence. And they certainly don’t consider qualitative research as data or evidence”. This dynamic operates discursively as much as institutionally: by invoking the vocabulary of “data”, “science”, and “objectivity”, IFIs construct a linguistic hierarchy in which certain forms of knowledge are legitimized while others are rendered biased or not trustworthy. This results in a framing of civil society actors as irrational or emotional, as one interviewee observed: “They fight CSOs with the arguments that CSOs use an emotional language and are not backed by data and analysis, which is not true”. Such framing is often reinforced by public statements that contrast “evidence-based reform” with “politicized/ideological debate”, implicitly positioning advocacy arguments as ideological rather than analytical or technical. Additionally, another expert highlighted that a data secrecy surrounds their language, as if what they say should always be believed as true or scientific: “What we often hear is: We’ve run the models, we’ve run the scenarios. It gives the illusion that something highly scientific is taking place. But when we ask if they can share the model and the tools, we hit a wall. We’ve also seen the repeated failure of these tools, with consistently over-optimistic growth projections and programs that rarely deliver the promised results. Yet these models remain proprietary. They’re used as powerful arguments to justify ‘reforms’ but never opened to scrutiny. They call on governments to be transparent yet refuse to extend the same transparency to governments or civil society”.
In this sense, the dynamics carry both discursive and relational implications. On the discursive level, it has compelled advocacy actors to adapt their language to the technical language mainstreamed by these institutions in order to penetrate the shield of “competence”. This often entails expending significant time and energy to demonstrate the validity and seriousness of their data and evidence, seeking to frame it as scientific rather than ideological, even though many advocacy actors view IFIs themselves as deeply ideological and political, not merely technical. On the relational level, this dynamic undermines the possibility of genuine trust between CSOs and IFIs. From the interviewees’ experiences and perspectives, the institutions’ attitude toward civil society is dismissive and hierarchical, characterized by tokenistic engagement rather than meaningful dialogue or commitment to change.
In conclusion, for many advocates, the experience of being asked to accept IFI’s institutional definitions, reject their own terminologies, and defend their evidence under unequal conditions amounts to what some describe as gaslighting, a process that disorients critique and restores the institution’s discursive and technical authority. This way, IFIs preserve legitimacy by transforming accountability into a battle of semantics, appearing transparent and collaborative while maintaining control over meaning.
The Instrumentalization of Social Protection Discourse
This paper pays particular attention to the IMF and World Bank’s discourse on social policy, specifically their framing of social protection. The discourse analysis, supported by the word frequency results, shows a clear increase in the use of the term “social protection” in IMF and World Bank documents over the past two decades. In the IMF dataset, the term is absent during 1993–1998, appears modestly in 2005–2010 with three mentions, and rises to 32 mentions in 2011–2020. For the World Bank, “social protection” registers 119 mentions in 2005–2010 and 237 mentions in 2011–2020. Also, across these two decades, the World Bank consistently maintains higher numeric levels than the IMF.
However, rather than demonstrating a policy transformation, this pattern reflects a rhetorical shift. The growing engagement with social protection functions as an instrument to soften the negative effects of austerity. According to one expert: “You cannot see social protection from the perspective of the IMF outside the frame of austerity. It’s a way to cushion its negative effects”. In this sense, social protection is not associated with redistribution or social justice; rather, it functions as a tool to make austerity more acceptable. Furthermore, there is an intentional blurring of terminology, as these institutions use “targeted social safety nets” interchangeably with “social protection”, thereby undermining years of advocacy for universal social protection. Notably, IMF and World Bank representatives often respond to calls for universal social protection by citing examples and proofs of their engagement in targeted safety nets, discrediting criticism through a confusion of language and terminology. This is particularly evident in the analyzed documents, where references to social protection are often accompanied by examples focused on expanding cash transfer programs or social safety nets. The following example from the World Bank’s 2021 annual report illustrates this pattern. Our qualitative analysis of the texts confirms that this framing is frequently repeated and recurrent across the documents: “Robust and adaptive social protection programs are key to protecting poor and vulnerable people and ensuring a resilient recovery. We are providing $1.8 billion under IDA to scale up social safety nets across Western and Central Africa and to strengthen social protection measures, recipient registries, cash transfer programs, and delivery mechanisms; these efforts will benefit about 40 million people”. Thus, the inclusion of “social protection” in their discourse does not indicate a substantive policy shift. Instead, the term is employed strategically to legitimize existing frameworks. This has, in turn, forced many advocacy efforts to focus on clarifying definitions, diverting valuable time and resources away from substantive policy reform.
Another recurring issue is the conflation of “universal social protection” with “universal basic income”, which both institutions then dismiss outright. In doing so, they invoke arguments about distributive inequalities related to universal basic income, arguments that are distorted and unrelated to civil society organizations’ actual demands for universal social protection.
Ultimately, the quantitative rise in mentions of “social protection” within IMF and World Bank documents represents a rhetorical shift rather than a substantive policy transformation. By positioning social protection merely as a tool to “cushion” negative effects, the discourse decouples the concept from redistribution or social justice, reframing it instead as a mechanism to make austerity acceptable. This rhetorical strategy relies on a blurring of terminology. By using “social protection” interchangeably with “targeted social safety nets”, these institutions undermine advocacy for universal coverage. This is further compounded by the dismissal of universal social protection through its conflation with “universal basic income” and distorted arguments regarding distributive inequalities. Consequently, this confusion forces advocacy efforts to divert valuable resources toward clarifying definitions, preventing a focus on genuine policy reform.
The Co-optation of Civil Society Language
As shown by Figures 1 and 2 below, the term “gender” first appears in the IMF discourse in the period between 2011 and 2020. The term “climate” follows a continuous upward trend: from twice in 1993–1998 to 19 times in 2021–2025. In the World Bank data, “gender” records 159 occurrences in 2005–2010, rises to 386 in 2011–2020, and marks 190 in 2021–2024 (indicating similar frequencies as the period of analysis is shorter). “Climate” appears more frequently throughout: 221 times in 2005–2010, 635 times in 2011–2020, and 672 times in 2021–2024.
As previously demonstrated and further showcased by this word frequency analysis, the discourses around gender, climate, and inequality have recently found their way into the IMF language. This is not to be taken for granted, since as is evident, this is a new phenomenon and a new language shift. The growing visibility of gender, climate, and inequality in IMF and World Bank discourse does not necessarily signal a fundamental policy shift, but rather a strategic rearticulation of civil society language within existing neoliberal frameworks. The institutions have learned to speak the language of “social justice”, but they do so in a way that redefines and neutralizes its transformative potential. What emerges is a process of co-optation, whereby the IMF and World Bank adopt key terms and narratives from civil society organizations to reinforce their legitimacy, while maintaining their traditional emphasis on fiscal consolidation, growth, and market efficiency.
According to one expert, this transformation is visible not only in policy papers but also in the Fund’s public and social media communication. Social media posts celebrating diversity and inclusion, for instance, create an image of openness and progressiveness, but, as they note: “Diversity within the IMF should not be about how many women or Egyptians are in the IMF; it should be about how much diversity of thought they have”. The adoption of “diversity” language thus becomes symbolic. The same applies to the IMF’s newfound enthusiasm for climate and gender: both are presented as new priorities even though they were previously resisted as not macro-critical. Yet, they are consistently interpreted through the lens of fiscal consolidation and private sector–led growth. They approach new priorities responding to popular demand; however, they manage to employ this to serve fiscal consolidation and the larger neoliberal framework.
The IMF’s engagement with climate illustrates this well. As one expert explains, the Fund’s climate agenda centers on “catalyzing public-private finance” and removing so-called “environmentally unfriendly” subsidies. These measures are portrayed as green reforms, but they often reproduce austerity logics and place disproportionate burdens on poorer households. While framed as environmentally responsible, the removal of fuel or electricity subsidies in countries without accessible alternatives contributes to deepening social inequality rather than alleviating it. In this sense, climate discourse becomes another tool to justify fiscal consolidation rather than to challenge its social costs.
A similar pattern emerges around gender. As another expert points out, the IMF and World Bank have reframed feminist and equality-oriented demands into what they call “macro-critical issues”. This redefinition allows these institutions to engage with gender without addressing structural power relations. For instance, female labor force participation is treated as a key indicator of gender progress, yet the underlying structural barriers, such as discrimination, care burdens, and the erosion of public services, remain unacknowledged. As one interviewee notes, “they only see it as a lack of capacity of women to compete in the market”. The resulting policies often promote entrepreneurship as a universal solution, ignoring the social and economic constraints that make entrepreneurship inaccessible or unsustainable for most women. Worse, austerity-driven cuts to public health and education expand women’s unpaid care work, pushing them further out of the formal economy.
Even when gender policies are implemented, they can reinforce rather than challenge stereotypes. One expert recalls the example of Egypt, where an IMF-backed policy required firms employing 100 or more women to provide childcare facilities. This measure, ostensibly pro-women, led many private companies to hire fewer women altogether. The policy thus not only failed to address gender inequality but also inadvertently entrenched the notion that childcare is solely a woman’s responsibility.
One interviewee emphasizes that civil society has grown increasingly aware of this manipulation of language. She notes that CSOs now “understand what is behind the language and can propose their own alternatives”, even though these are often dismissed by IFIs. This dynamic illustrates how the co-optation process works: by controlling the vocabulary and framing of debate, the IMF and World Bank set the boundaries of what is considered legitimate policy discussion.
This linguistic and discursive capture creates a paradox for civil society. Many CSOs have contributed, often unintentionally, to this process by continuously demanding that the IMF “do more” on social issues. “We should be careful what we wish for”, one expert warns, as the attitude is often: “You want this, we will do it, but our way”. The result is that civil society’s critical language is absorbed and reinterpreted within the institutions’ own technocratic frameworks, allowing the IMF and World Bank to appear responsive and progressive without altering their structural mandates.
In sum, the IMF and World Bank’s growing use of terms like gender, climate, and inequality reflects a sophisticated adaptation. These concepts are stripped of their political and redistributive meanings and reinserted into the logic of fiscal consolidation, market efficiency, and growth. As civil society actors increasingly recognize, this co-optation blurs the line between engagement and endorsement, forcing a difficult reckoning over whether to continue pushing for reform from within or to resist the institutions’ discursive capture from the outside.
Conclusion
The language of the World Bank and IMF is complex, and it cannot be completely deciphered within the scope of one report. However, this paper attempted to draw an image, rooted in the experiences of those actively engaging with these institutions for the past 10 years and more. The centrality of their experiences and voices in leading the analysis is intentional, as language is given meaning through the lived experiences of its receptors.
The findings reveal a clear pattern: the IMF and World Bank employ language as an instrument of power. By substituting politically charged terms such as “austerity” with technocratic ones like “fiscal consolidation”, they construct an image of neutrality that legitimizes harmful policies while concealing their social consequences. When confronted with criticism, they deploy narrative reversal tactics, discrediting evidence, shifting responsibility, and reframing failures as the fault of domestic actors. Equally significant is the instrumentalization of social protection discourse. The IMF and World Bank’s use of “social protection” is not rooted in a rights-based vision; it rather functions as a compensatory mechanism to cushion the adverse effects of austerity. Their preference for targeted, means-tested safety nets over universal systems reflects a continuation of the same market-oriented logic. Similarly, the incorporation of civil society language, around gender, climate, and inequality, represents not a genuine policy reorientation, but a sophisticated process of co-optation.
What emerges is a complex picture of continuity disguised as change. The IMF and World Bank’s discursive transformation does not mark the abandonment of neoliberal commitment, but its renewal through linguistic innovation. This allows the institutions to appear responsive to social and political demands while preserving the same macroeconomic priorities that have long undermined social justice in the Arab region and beyond.
For civil society and policy actors, the implications are profound. Engagement with these institutions now requires not only technical expertise but also discursive literacy, the ability to decode, challenge, and reclaim the meanings embedded in the language of reform. This significantly affects advocacy efforts by imposing discursive maneuvering: a substantial investment of resources is often diverted toward proving, in technical terms recognized by the IFIs, what is already evident and evidence-backed from the perspective of CSOs. This has repeatedly reignited the debate regarding the dilemma of engagement versus co-optation, as advocacy actors in spaces mediated by IFIs continue to question the validity and strategic value of such engagements.
Future research and policy work can further analyze this language by extending beyond official documents to analyze statements by IFI officials regarding the region, linking them to specific policy issues or advocacy demands. This kind of research is political at heart, engaging with the political function of written documents and statements. It also bridges the lived experiences of activists, experts, and advocacy actors with technical language and texts. Finally, as the findings of this paper suggest, the struggle over social and economic policy is increasingly a struggle over words: who defines them, who controls them, and to what end, and how understanding better this language can empower and improve advocacy efforts in this sphere.
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The views represented in this paper are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Arab Reform Initiative, its staff, or its board.