Interesting article here.

Toward the end of the article Mallaby concludes:

The good news is that many within the bank have come to understand this dilemma. After experiences like Qinghai and a decade of Wolfensohn’s efforts to woo the NGOs, they have rightly realized that you can’t win over every critic.

I have to pick a quarrel with him on that point. The development pros in the Bank's management knew it all along -- the NGOs, especially the single-issue types, are insatiable. I think what Mallaby is really faulting is Wolfensohn for dismissing the concerns of his management and for believing that a charm offensive could bring the NGOs into a "partnership" with the Bank, which the Bank would then dominate.

If that was indeed Wolfensohn's thinking, it was naive. Even the more "adult" NGOs make their living as watch dogs. They can be satisfied on the merits of specific projects, but they will always start out from an adversarial stance, and the last thing they want is to be seen as Wolfensohn's puppy dogs. They both resent and benefit from the Bank's power as a world-wide "convening authority" on a given issue. They want to set the agenda, not be simply a part of the Bank's agenda. So there will always be a tug-and-pull, even when relations are less mutually suspicious.

That's not to say that the Bank shouldn't have been incorporating the concerns of a number of the NGOs more explicitly into its work at an earlier stage. The process that Wolfensohn initiatied has pushed the Bank to be a leader in guaging some of the negative impact of certain types of development and coming up with innovative and not necessarily hugely expensive ways of mitigating some of the impact. The lessons learned from one project get shared across the Bank's membership when another country wants to do something similar.

Another positive result has been a more regular and open method of consultation, especially in-country, which has been good not only for the way the Bank does its own business but also for the developing countries. It introduces transparency and decision-making processes within the countries where the projects are located that are healthy in a broader sense of setting standards and expectations for governance on important matters, and that contribute to the long-run success of the specific projects.

Nevertheless, Mallaby's remarks about the potential damage to the development process of many NGOs are right on target. Most Bank managers would be able to add to Mallaby's list to illustrate (1) the irrationality of many objections to the Bank's policies and specific projects, (2) the conversion of attacks on the Bank into a political lobbying process in the capitals of the G-7 that is anything but open, transparent and on the merits, and (3) the unnecessasry extra costs and delay of projects, from the very earliest planning stage through the approval and execution. One of the reasons for the shift in the '90s by borrowing members of the Bank toward policy-related blanace-of-payments loans and away from infrastructure project loans was specifically the sorts of problems Mallaby outlines.

On the subject of NGOs, there's a more fundamental problem that Mallaby doesn't stress.I have a much broader philosophical concern with the way NGOs (even the most reputable, both international and local) have emerged as "stakeholders" during Wolfensohn's tenure. Obviously in the past, many developing countries have suffered from the fact that selecting development priorities and lending projects have relied on government officials as the country's exclusive voice and as decision-makers about incurring large amounts of external indebteness. In many of the countries where the Bank operates, even the most enlightened and least corrupt, there are major parts of the population who are excluded from any meaningful "voice" in the political system. Some way of involving what has come to be called "civil society" is certainly important.

But major issues remain: who selects which NGOs will be those recognized as the authentic representatives of civil society. And should they be given some sort of formal role as independent actors in the agenda-setting and decision-making process. It's one thiing to solicit input during the planning of a specific project to from non-governmental groups that will be directly affected by or involved in the project, or to work with those groups to "get the word out" to people who need to know about particulars of the project implementation once it's underway. But that's a far cry from validating groups that claim to be representatives of groups of the population that think they should have some "say" generally. The whole process, in a society with weak or virtually non-existent institutions, is ripe for manipulation. In one where there are some traditional institutional structures but major reform is needed, existing iinstitutional arrangements may reflect a "corporatist" approach to governance by elites with most to lose from reform. Yet attempts to give voice through new institutions to the voiceless elements of the society may produce leadership that's not truly authentic, or more extreme than the general population. And all of the above can encourage the worst sort of rent-seeking behavior by groups or their represenatives.

The same sorts of dilemmas are facing the US in its "nation-building" efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Folks may turn up their noses at "warlords," "ayatollahs and clerics," "tribal sheiks" and "Ba'athists" and decry their continued influence after elections. But if you don't like that list, who instead should be recognized as the legitimate voices of Iraqis or Afghans until a political system develops? Exiled elites? Technocrats? Not an easy question to answer in a way that would suit Western sensibilities, yet picking our own preferred leaders -- or continuing to influence the process so that effort by potential leaders is expended on getting US backing, not on winning local support -- is counterproductive to the very nation-building we claim to be there to support. Very tricky indeed.

BTW -- I'm looking forward to Mallaby's book. Sounds like he got a lot of the story right, though it also sounds a bit too much a psycho-study for my tastes. I have my own opinions, and will be interested to compare them to Mallaby's tale. There is absolutely no question that Wolfensohn was brilliant and amazingly quick at analyzing the problems the Bank was facing, but his weaknesses in execution were as much from lack of experience in a bureaucracy as from personality (though there's clearly some relation between the two, but not a unidirectional causality that a focus on personality might suggest). I think I'll wait till it's out in paperback.

It sounds like Mallaby is on the right track. Many of the same points were raised by Jagdish Bhagwatii in In Defense of Globalization, which is pretty good but not as argumentative as perhaps it should be.

I still haven't cracked the Mallaby book though; I tend to buy in batches, and am in the middle of a so-so overview of Pakistan at the moment. It's given me a better understanding of Kashmir, but the writing is lousy and the insights pedestrian.

What do you think about this?

I think it's a decent compromise between secret meddling and letting the Iranians run the table.