During the Cardoso administration, which began in 1995, a fivefold increase in its government support transformed the bank from a financier of infrastructure projects into the main arm of economic policy.
But if we tie ourselves in knots over whether we are an arm of social policy rather than a home for creativity, defining the mission can end up causing confusion.
The EU may be, cumulatively, the world's largest donor, but the Nordics hate links between aid and commercial interests whereas others blatantly use aid as an arm of trade policy, to channel money to former colonies or to scatter small sums around the globe to boost their profiles.
"These are significant changes to the government of the state," said John Hood, president of the John William Pope foundation, the grant-making arm of the policy empire controlled by North Carolina Republican megadonor — and top McCrory backer — Art Pope.
Rauner's statement (above) at a Sept. 19 press conference that he knew nothing in advance about the Madigan video, to be released by the lobbying arm of the policy institute, only made this whole story better.
These were watershed events in the history of the CIA since the Agency had never before engaged in fomenting "regime change" and, according to President Harry Truman, was never intended to function as an operational arm of U.S. policy in that way.
While schools are perhaps the most tangible expression of a community's expectations and hopes for its children's development, they are also the operational arm of national policy and bureaucracy systems.
We provide one arm of the policy-formulating perspective.
The greatest challenge remains at the barangay level, the basic political unit and primary planning and implementing arm of government policies, plans and programs.
Would the former deputy defence secretary turn the world's top aid agency into an arm of American foreign policy?
That is good for China's hopes of getting a good return in its investment in the AIIB, but less so for any residual hopes that the bank might become an arm of Chinese foreign policy.
