As Multilateral Development Banks increasingly gained influence in shaping global development
transnational social movements pushed to hold them accountable for their human rights impact
towards communities. Leon Valentin Schettler presents a novel causal mechanism of movement
advocacy towards MDBs combining disruptive and conventional tactics. Systematically comparing
the evolution of human rights standards and complaint mechanisms over the last three decades
he reveals how the combination of 1) declining US hegemony 2) counter-mobilization by China
and 3) movement cooptation by the World Bank bureaucracy led to a dilution of human rights
accountability in the 2010s.
