Results-based regulation: (re)definition from the World Bank’s arguments in post-2000 scenario

Abstract

This study is about regulation according to the approach that focuses on the results in the educational area, following what the World Bank designs in its referral for several countries’ education. It aims to understand and analyze arguments in a sample of the agency’s publications, in order to highlight its concept about this regulation approach that gains centrality with the changes in capital dynamics, in the final decades of the 20th century. The article is based on historical materialism and on theoretical-methodological background that includes the discourse as text, discursive practice, and social practice. It points out that despite the World Bank recommendations updating, the idea of quality education for all is a central concern in the documents’ sample examined. It also points out that the World Bank’s redefinitions over time include priorities and strategies that place results-based orientation as a necessity to contemporary education and it is one of the foundations of the reforms this economic organism encourages, proposes, and performs. It concludes, on the one hand, the World Bank supports the bourgeois hegemony strengthening, acting in favor of an educational regulation concept that focuses on the results. On the other hand, the World Bank’s agenda is evolving. In this direction, the results-based regulation concept is an expanding logic.