World Bank presidency can’t be a done deal

Posted on March 15, 2012 by Liz Stuart

As the global financial crisis threatens to undo years of progress in poor countries, the World Bank has raised its lending to unprecedented levels – $57 billion in 2011, more than double what it committed in 2008. With the cash, comes sway over developing countries’ policies, poverty programs, and governance systems.

The Bank only operates in developing countries, and it is people in these countries who must live day-to-day with its policies and programs. The Bank surely has an interest, then, in shoring up its legitimacy and credibility in its dealing with these clients. And indeed, the Bank holds itself up as a model of accountability, transparency and good governance.

Yet the very starting point of the Bank’s own governance, its leadership, is a stitch-up. Continue reading →

Chinese candidates

Posted on March 15, 2012 by MC Atrium

Several previous discussions talked about potential Chinese candidates. Best to look at internal names. Over the last ten years, there have been only four Chinese names Continue reading →

Coordinated CSO Lobbying?

Posted on March 15, 2012 by Voice of Reason

I find it interesting that a Canadian CSO, the McLeod Group, and Australian National University’s Development Policy Centre, launched similarly argued statements about what their governments ought to do in the upcoming short-listing and selection of Robert Zoellick’s successor. Continue reading →

Will the next World Bank president have ‘official views’?

Posted on March 13, 2012 by Tom Fry

Amidst all the talk of Jeffrey Sachs’s ‘pick me!’ campaign, Larry Summer’s numerous indiscretions, and the dimming prospect of a BRIC candidate, development consultant Ben Ramalingam offers something a little different. Drawing on work by former Bank staffer and academic David Ellerman he argues that a problem with the Bank is that it has ‘official views’. These views, which the Bank pours energy and resources into coming up with, constitute the Bank’s official line on issues, and become orthodoxies that inhibit genuine learning, country and community ownership, and open dialogue:

adverse opinions and critical reasoning tend to give way to authority, rules and bureaucratic reasoning shaped by the hierarchies within the organisation. Moreover, these Official Views “short-circuit” and bypass the active learning capability of national and local actors, and substitute the authority of external agencies in its place Continue reading →

Qualities required – two interesting views

Posted on March 12, 2012 by Jesse Griffiths

Two well written pieces have caught my eye recently, with different views about what makes a good World Bank president. First, former Venezuelan Minister and Bank executive director Moisés Naím lists what he believes are five misconceptions in the Financial Times:

1. The World Bank is a bank and thus its leader should be a banker. No! The Bank is more than a bank. It is a consulting company for developing countries, a multilateral organisation, an intensely political entity as well as a highly technical one. Its role as an international lending bank is declining relative to its advisory role.

2. Its leader needs to be a politician with access to the US President and a stellar Rolodex. No! Being chums with the president and other heavyweights of course helps. But just having access to power without also having a vision for the institution has been disastrous…

3. The candidate needs to be a development expert. No! Continue reading →