The development of the World Bank as an autonomous legal system

This thesis positions the World Bank Inspection Panel at the centre of a World Bank legal system.
International legal positivism can no longer explain the governance role and actions that the World Bank is undertaking and, instead, systems theory is put forward as an alternative tool of legal understanding.
The conceptual tool of systems theory, as a tool of legal understanding, is analysed and constructed to provide a mechanism via which the Bank's behaviour can be framed in terms of law.
The essentialist analysis of systems theory identifies, inter alia, the need for a Court-like body ruling upon the legal/illegal binary communication divide as being a required element for the evolution of a normative system into a legal system.
The World Bank Inspection Panel is put forward as this Court-like body and its evolution identified as triggering a formative change in the understanding of how the World Bank operates.
This thesis concludes that this shift into a legal system demands a new understanding of the problems and issues that confront the Bank today.
Rather than framing its issues in terms of legal positivism, issues such as the Bank's democratic accountability, conditionality and mission creep should instead be framed in terms of systems theory.