International organisations as policy bricoleurs: An analysis of the World Bank's healthcare financing recommendations for Argentina and Croatia

This article analyses how the World Bank formulates healthcare financing recommendations by examining the cases of Argentina and Croatia, two representative cases of socio-political transformations in Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe during the Washington (1987-1997) and post-Washington Consensus (1997-2007) periods. It argues that when formulating recommendations, the World Bank is involved in the process of policy bricolage, defined as a process in which policy actors draw on multiple sources of knowledge and information to piece together contextualised policy solutions instead of relying on textbook blueprints or predefined solutions. By conducting a document analysis of World Bank publications, our findings suggest that, in formulating healthcare financing recommendations, the organisation does not dogmatically follow a particular policy paradigm. Instead, it contextualises and recombines existing ideas to tailor recommendations to country-specific conditions, namely economic and political circumstances, as well as healthcare system performance.