Sept. 25, 2001
Who Are These Guys?
One Perspective on Globalization from the World Bank
By Stephen
Commins
Every era has its defining events or symbols.
Take the present day. What was recently celebrated as the new era of
“globalization” has also brought with it increasing dissatisfaction
and boisterous protests against the organizations and institutions supposedly
responsible for this new era.
However, the nature of the protests and their messages often obscures
the realities about the institutions being criticized — and about
the complexities of the world in which these institutions operate. Having
been senior policy and planning director for an international non-governmental
organization (NGO) for eight years in the 1990s, and having spent the
seven years providing research and technical assistance to NGOs in the
1980s, my work of research, designing projects, and developing policies
included occasionally lambasting the World Bank, even while recognizing
its evolving organizational goals and culture. Now, working at the World
Bank for the past three years, I have found even more from the inside
that the World Bank is neither monolithic nor all powerful, and indeed
has embraced new development ideas as much as governments, academics
and NGOs.
I first became aware of the World Bank nearly 30 years ago when a professor
gave me a copy of Robert McNamara’s (president of the World Bank
in the 1970s) speech on the “poorest of the poor.” From this
speech and similar initiatives, the World Bank embarked on nearly a
decade of increased support for large-scale agricultural projects and
‘integrated rural development.’
It was this World Bank that I encountered in the early 1980s, researching
my doctoral dissertation in regional planning by studying two World
Bank-funded area development projects in Liberia. This was a very different
World Bank from that of today, one of technical inputs, agricultural
research, and tightly drawn project goals. It was also the 1970s era
World Bank, one already being overtaken by a “new” World Bank
for the 1980s.
The 1980s World Bank was the one that has become characterized or caricatured
as the heartless institution of economic reforms and budget discipline.
Out of the financial crises in Latin America and Africa in the early
1980s, as well as the apparent failures of projects in countries without
budget discipline, emerged the policy reform instrument generally known
as structural adjustment. Just a few years after trekking through Liberian
forests, I was organizing a workshop and then editing a book on adjustment
policies in Africa.
And so it has gone on for the past two decades. During much of the 1990s,
I worked with NGOs and civil groups seeking to reform Bank adjustment
operations and to increase civil society participation in Bank decision
making. Through these various dynamics, criticisms emerge, the Bank
seeks to respond — sometimes effectively, sometimes in muddled
form. The most recent pressures for change had appeared to come from
the financial and social crises that followed the meltdown of the Thai
currency four years ago. But this was soon overtaken by the wider criticisms
of “globalization.”
Thus, the emergence of large-scale protests at the World Trade Organization
meetings in Seattle (November 1999) surprised many observers, even those
who track the various social movements that are critical of what is
too easily termed “globalization.” But, in fact, what do the
protests mean?
First, that however one uses the word, “globalization” has
some significant negatives. Second, that exclusion from economic benefits,
or increased environmental costs, means that one cannot assume technological
change and more productive economies equals greater inclusion or sustainability.
Finally, the Asia crisis and the critiques of globalization have led
to a decline of simplistic “marketism” and the silly triumphalism
that accompanied the end of the Cold War. The world is still a complicated
and difficult place.
The movements that encompass different critiques about globalization
are healthy and necessary insofar as they expand public engagement in
policy making and bring greater civic involvement in shaping economic,
environmental, and social policies. But, the protests that descend on
international meetings beg several questions: Whose voice is to be heard
and whose choice gets priority? Whose decision gets preference in the
end?
Take the recently stated demands of Mobilization for Justice for the
World Bank and IMF Annual Meetings with their Boards of Governors:
• Open the meetings to the public (yes, but who decides on the
seats? Religious groups have the largest membership globally, followed
by trade unions, not NGOs).
• Cancel the remaining debt of the world’s impoverished countries
(this is a decision of the G7 governments, not IMF or Bank management).
• End policies that hinder access of the poor to food, health care,
and education (this avoids two issues by blaming the Bank and Fund:
a. governments decide on their budgets and priorities; b. in over 40
countries, civil strife does more to harm the poor than any economic
reform, good or bad).
• Stop funding socially and environmentally destructive projects
(as The Washington Post noted in its editorial on Aug. 31, these
type of critiques are increasingly dated, and ignore the difficult trade-offs
faced by low-income countries).
The problem with voice and messages does not mean that the World Bank
has or should ignore the deeper issues behind the protests. Indeed,
the role of public engagement and non-violent protest is part of the
lifeblood of civil society.
The impetus for debt reduction, now carried out through the Highly Indebted
Poor Countries Program, was generated in particular by Jubilee 2000.
The boards of the World Bank and the IMF have now approved programs
for substantial debt reduction for over 20 countries, which will cut
their burdens overall by over 65 percent.
This in turn led to the initiation of national Poverty Reduction Strategies,
which are drawn up by countries themselves, in wide consultation with
community groups, religious organizations, unions, and others, and then
guide government budgets and donor support. These are all published
on the World Bank’s Web site, and the alternate views of different
civil society organizations are also widely available.
The engagement between the World Bank and different levels of civil
society is widespread, with some 60 percent of all Bank projects undertaken
with some civil society involvement. For example, the Bank’s new
Multi-Country Assistance Program on HIV/AIDS in Africa, actively champions
the involvement of NGOs. Our recent workshop on Orphans and Vulnerable
Children, featured speakers from both African community groups and large
NGOs — they set the direction of the discussion, not the World
Bank. I have met with NGO friends from Africa, Latin America, and Eastern
Europe within the past few months who have described major meetings
in their countries that few, if any, people working in Washington, DC,
will ever hear about.
The transparency of Bank information is astonishing given that there
are always governments which for various reason do not want certain
documents published. When I wrote my dissertation, none of the project
documents for Liberia were public — they were all passed along
to me ‘off the record’ by World Bank staff. Now, you can go
online or to the World Bank Info Shop and suffer information overload.
Remember, this is a development bank owned by 182 member countries that
publishes detailed accounts of all its financial operations; where all
loans and significant developments must be approved by the board’s
executive directors who represent these 182 co-owners. How could such
a place be secretive?
In addition to the above, two specific areas where the Bank has sought
to respond to concerns about globalization have been in highlighting
and giving greater emphasis to the human dimensions of development (health,
education, social services) and highlighting the unfair trade barriers
erected by developed countries that reduce the export earnings of low
income countries.
Finally, as much as the protests raise certain concerns, the most important
voices are those captured in the World Bank’s massive study, “Voices
of the Poor,” which interviewed 60,000 poor people. These voices,
from the poorest corners of our world, are the most important —
and should be heard above the cacophony of dozens of causes and placards.
These voices remind us that the financial and social crises in East
Asia, Russia, and Latin America have had costs that are larger and louder
in their pain than the voices of traveling protests, and have causes
that are far more complex and difficult than can be summarized in a
slogan. The voices of the poor echo with the fragility as well as potential
of global economic integration.
For the World Bank today, the foundations of development must include
the social and human dimensions, as well as financial and institutional.
The gap between the potential for better lives and realities of exclusion
can be partially bridged by policies and institutional mechanisms that
link poverty reduction and human development with sustained and secure
economic growth.
At the end of the day, the World Bank is neither the cause of nor the
solution to all the world’s ills. This institution, which along
with the United Nations and its specialized agencies, was designed at
the end of World War II, has clearly needed to update its mission for
a different era. The process is well under way, influenced heavily by
what poor countries themselves and their citizens have identified for
themselves are their priorities — better prospects amidst the different
threads of “globalization,” prospects that can offer opportunity
for livelihoods, empowerment in their own communities and institutions,
and security for flourishing and full lives.
Stephen Commins, is a social policy specialist for the Human Development
Network of the World Bank, a lecturer in the Department of Urban Planning,
School of Public Policy and Social Research, UCLA, and this year he
is a lecturer in the Elliott School of International Affairs.
Send feedback to: bygeorge@gwu.edu
