[WashingtonPost] World Bank Leader Receives A Critical Accounting By Nora Boustany Wednesday, August 22, 2001; Page A14 The September/October issue of Foreign Policy carries an investigative piece that is sharply critical of World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn's style of personalized management and costly embrace of trendy ideas. The article, with a cover title of "The Man Who Broke the Bank?" and an inside headline of "Who's Minding the Bank?" was written by Stephen Fidler, U.S. diplomatic editor of the Financial Times, who began the project late last year and said by telephone from London yesterday that he had interviewed and made use of more than 100 primary sources in his reporting. Fidler writes that the bank's potential for expanding and influencing the path of the global economy has not been realized in Wolfensohn's tenure, a time when the bank's potential influence "seemed to be on the verge of an unprecedented expansion." The report credits Wolfensohn with being the hardest working president the World Bank has had and its brightest and most passionate leader since Robert McNamara. But it also describes Wolfensohn's ego, his temper and his inability to deal with those challenging his views. Those traits, the magazine says, have diffused the bank's focus and sense of mission as a tool for development and have driven out some of its best staff members. Without a clear mandate or well-defined products, the institution finds itself in crisis and awash in criticism. The article also assails some of the bank's shareholder nations, including the United States, Britain, France and Germany, for behaving like absentee owners who ignore the bank except on particular occasions that serve their pet objectives. Many in the bank say Chinese political sensitivities killed a controversial anti-poverty project in western China last year, rather than real concerns about the program, according to Fidler. A World Faiths Development Dialogue to involve the world's faiths in the development process has cost the bank up to $1 million at the same time that cuts have been made in essential operating expenditures, according to Devesh Kapur of Harvard University, who is coauthor of an official history of the World Bank. To his critics, Wolfensohn has promoted favorites, ignoring bank regulations on staff advancement and prompting talentedsenior staff to leave. They also say he has caved in to New Age economic fads and interest groups, sacrificing the bank's intellectual integrity. Fidler said yesterday that Wolfensohn "gets shocked when people disagree with him, he sees it as a kind of betrayal from a family member." Wolfensohn's defenders point out that he has weeded out fiefdoms and apparatchiks and that his programs have contributed to raising the level offemale enrollment in schools,reduced infant mortality rates and raised life expectancy. "It represents some of the battleground over the future of the bank. Do we move forward with the new development agenda of empowering poor people, reaching out to civil society and moving beyond the simple economic analysis or do we turn the clock back to the top-down economic focus of the eighties?" asked Caroline Anstey, chief of media relations at the bank. "This article represents the view of those who would like to turn the clock back and to change the Wolfensohn agenda," she charged. In the article, Wolfensohn makes a strong defense of the bank and its direction. "Put me aside for the moment and say I'm useless, egocentric, insecure, all the things you want to say, but don't damage the institution because you want to damage me."
