Can the World Bank fight corruption?
Coverage of the Singapore meetings continues. As a follow-on to Michael's notes below from the corruption seminar, here's Francis Fukuyama on Hilary Benn's criticism of the World Bank and whether "corruption-linked conditionality is getting in the way of providing aid to the world's poor".
Fukuyama, who has just started blogging at The American Interest, calls this one a battle Paul Wolfowitz can't win. He concludes that "Wolfowitz is heading an organization poorly structured to lead a fight against corruption", because:
- our charter prohibits the World Bank from getting into politics. (Hard to disentangle corruption from politics.)
- "the Bank is structured as a lending and aid-granting institution, and all of its incentives are to push money out the door," and
- "pressure to move money regardless of performance is vastly increased by lobbying from the likes of Jeff Sachs, Bob Geldorf, Bono, and others to meet the UN’s Millennium Development Goals."
Look for some more Singapore posts from Michael Jarvis, our blogger-on-the-scene, in the next few days. (Disclosure: Fukuyama was my graduate school advisor, and I'm glad to see him in the blogosphere.)
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When we read that "corruption-linked conditionality is getting in the way of providing aid to the world's poor" we should not forget that this is always anteceded by “corruption itself gets in the way of providing aid to the world’s poor” and so I believe this is a case where the burden of proof is quite misplaced.
Of course no one should let corruption stand in the way for helping the poor but that does not signify you have to go through corruption to reach the poor. If the Bank harbors reasonable doubts that corruption might diminish considerably the effectiveness of any assistance then it should have all the right to ask for the assurances that this will not be so and, if these are not given, to suspend the disbursements and inform the final recipients of the reasons.
To think that scarce development funds should be used without consideration of corruption is just plainly wrong, and there is no correct way around that, especially since it would effectively mean that the Bank signals it condones corruption and that it will not stand firmly on the side of the victims of corruption.
To me what has been the most surprising about the whole issue is that it is an issue.
Posted by: Per Kurowski | Sep 19, 2006 4:28:06 PM
Prof. Fukuyama isn't my advisor but his opinions carry quite a lot of weight in policy circles. But then I'm currently a SAIS student and perhaps a little biased.
Also, I've linked his blog to the Development Gateway Foundation's website so it's sure to get quite a number of hits in the coming weeks.
Posted by: Brian Wilcox | Oct 2, 2006 11:10:06 AM