New Books in Economics Elliot Dolan-Evans, "Making War Safe for Capitalism: The World Bank, IMF, and the Conflict in Ukraine" (Bristol UP, 2025)
Feb 28, 2026
Dr. Elliot Dolan-Evans, political economy and law scholar and author, explores how the World Bank and IMF operate in active conflicts. He discusses their wartime strategies in Ukraine. Conversations cover agriculture and land reforms, gas sector restructuring and household impacts, and pension changes that shifted care burdens. The talk questions how reforms de-risk capital amid war.
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Why Bretton Woods Moved Into Active Conflicts
- The World Bank and IMF shifted from mainly post-conflict work to engaging in active conflicts over recent decades.
- Institutional legal changes plus the SDG-era push for 'from billions to trillions' enabled them to treat peace and conflict as global public goods to fund.
How The Cascade Approach Mobilizes Private Capital
- The World Bank's cascade approach pairs upstream policy reforms with downstream de-risking to mobilize private capital.
- Upstream = liberalizing policy (land, energy); downstream = guarantees, PPPs, blended finance to make projects investable.
Ukraine Became A Test Case For War-Era Lending
- In Ukraine after 2014 the World Bank and IMF continued usual programs despite active war, barely mentioning the conflict in loan documents.
- Ukraine became a testing ground where internal strategies were built for operating during active violence.
