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Third, he seems to have been a consistent behind-the-scenes supporter of the Bank, whereas many of his Bush administration colleagues would be just as happy to see it shut down and its Washington headquarters turned into private condominiums and offices.
So presumably he has a constructive vision for the Bank’s future.
But Zoellick is not without his weaknesses.
First and foremost, his appointment extends the embarrassingly outmoded practice of always installing an American in the job.
With the Bank tirelessly preaching the merits of good governance, its failure to adopt democratic principles undercuts its own legitimacy.
The claim that the World Bank needs an American president to ensure that the US keeps donating money is ridiculous.
The annual cost of the US contribution to the World Bank, even taking into account off-the-books loan guarantees, is relatively minor.
Any number of developing countries, from China to India to Brazil, could easily step up if the US foolishly stepped down.
Zoellick’s background as a lawyer hardly makes him perfect for the job, either.
The World Bank presidency is not about negotiating treaties, as Zoellick did when he was US Trade Representative.
The Bank’s most important role in development today is as a “knowledge bank” that helps aggregate, distill, and disseminate best practices from around the world.
In this respect, the Bank’s technical assistance to governments is very similar to what private consultants offer to companies.
Moreover, many of the World Bank president’s most important decisions involve economics in an essential way.
Wrong economic decisions, such as in the 1970’s, when Robert McNamara pushed grandiose, but environmentally devastating, infrastructure projects, have haunted the Bank for decades.
The biggest question mark, though, is whether Zoellick will be able to hit the ground running and implement desperately needed reforms.
Reform number one, of course, is to ensure that the next World Bank President is not an American.
Rodrigo de Rato, Zoellick’s counterpart at the European-dominated International Monetary Fund, has already suggested that his successor should be chosen in a more inclusive process.
The World Bank should be ashamed that its president has not yet offered a similar proposal.
Second, Zoellick should ask why the Bank spends only 2.5% of its budget on the “knowledge bank” research function that it trumpets so proudly in its external relations materials, while it spends three times that amount on maintaining its executive board.
Third, Zoellick should use his formidable negotiating skills to cajole rich countries into greatly increasing the grant component of World Bank aid.
The idea that a big government-guaranteed global bank is needed to fill holes in private capital markets is laughable nowadays.
True, the Bank’s poorest clients have little access to private capital markets. By and large, however, the poorest countries need grants, not loans that they still won’t be able to pay in 20 years.
As the Bank switches from loans to grants, it can use some of its massive retained earnings to endow its “knowledge bank” function and related technical advice.
But all this knowledge shouldn’t be free.
A lot of technical advice falls on deaf ears, with countries listening only long enough to get their hands on Bank money.
Instead of merely pushing its agenda, the Bank should start charging for its technical advice on a graduated scale so that more of its engagements are client-driven.
Last but not least, the Bank needs to play a much bigger role in environmental issues and, in general, in promoting good international citizenship by both rich and poor countries.
(Some of us have been proposing this for almost two decades.)
Of course, Zoellick could just attempt to fill the role symbolically and do little or nothing, as some of his predecessors have done.
Or, less likely, he could embrace some megalomaniacal and over-reaching vision of government intervention, as others have tried.
In any case, let’s wish him luck.
The world needs the World Bank a lot more than it needs another condominium.
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Zuma Rising
The anxiety over Jacob Zuma’s election as president of South Africa obscures a significant milestone: for the first time in decades, a sub-Saharan nation has at its helm a champion of ordinary people.
African politics has long been the exclusive domain of aristocrats, soldiers, and technocrats.
Even with the spread of democratic elections, the region’s leaders tend to come from the ranks of soldiers (Uganda, Rwanda, Zimbabwe), family dynasties (Togo, Kenya, etc), or university professors, lawyers, and economists (Ghana, Malawi, Liberia).
Now South Africa, the region’s economic engine and home to its most sophisticated universities, media, and corporations, has a former goat herder at its helm, a rare African leader with the common touch.
Zuma is legendary for his ability to connect with ordinary people.
He’s secure enough to dance and sing in public. He speaks the language of populism, raising hopes for the vast majority of South Africans who daily endure the misery of poor housing, schools, and health care.
In contrast to his two predecessors – the saintly Nelson Mandela, who emphasized racial healing, and the aristocratic Thabo Mbeki, who reassured financiers with his strong grasp of macroeconomics – Zuma recognizes the pent-up demand for material improvement in the lives of his country’s tens of millions of have-nots. “...
Until now, populism has been the missing note in African political culture.
Zuma, who spent his youth herding cattle and only gained formal education while in the notorious Robben Island prison with Mandela, is refreshingly aware that Africa’s biggest problem is its inequalities, not its global marginalization. In Africa’s wealthiest nation – but also the nation where wealth is most unequally ...
Yet, while Zuma’s populist appeal reflects South Africa’s especially large differences in economic class, the threat of imposing higher taxes and other obligations on employers and the wealthy has raised fears at home and internationally.
Moreover, Zuma has been called a chameleon, accused of telling his audiences what they want to hear.
Zuma’s turbulent personal life – many wives and his embarrassing contention during a rape trial that he avoided HIV infection by taking a shower – has invited ridicule.
Most seriously, doubts persist about his commitment to democracy, with critics arguing he’s an old-style African “big man” ready to bully opponents and ravage the public coffers with his cronies.
Dismissing complaints, Zuma insists, “There’s no cloud around me.”
His defenders, meanwhile, point to two benefits that he has already delivered: an end to Mbeki’s ambivalent approach to fighting HIV/AIDS, the country’s major public health threat, and a refreshing willingness to move against Zimbabwe’s aged dictator, Robert Mugabe, whom Mbeki coddled out of a misguided sense of loyalt...
In an Africa bereft of successful populist politicians, Zuma’s role models may come from Latin America, where income inequality is also extreme and the trade-union movement, as in South Africa, is strong and militant.
With enormous pressure from ordinary people to deliver tangible gains, Zuma the populist will quickly face a major test: will he emulate Lula of Brazil, who has struck an admirable balance between good economic governance and re-distribution of wealth to the poor?
Or will he follow the path of Hugo Chávez, a popular autocrat who seems to prefer building a cult of personality over raising living standards for the poor.
The stakes for Africa are enormous.
South Africa has the continent’s largest economy and, until the global financial crisis, posted 10 years of steady economic growth.
In an economic slowdown, the country’s severe crime problem might only worsen; so might unemployment, which already tops 20% in the formal economy.
Zuma senses the urgency of the situation.
He is, after all, 67 years old and likely to serve only a single term in office. “We can’t waste time,” he says.
Yet, according to the political economist Moeletsi Mbeki, at his core, “Zuma is a conservative.” In this sense, Zuma represents yesterday’s South Africa.
He is part of the proud generation that defeated apartheid – and then peacefully engineered a transition to durable black-majority rule.
Their achievement remains one of the greatest in recent history.
At the same time, Zuma’s revolutionary generation still seems uneasy leading South Africa in a post-apartheid era that is now 15 years old.
In a region that reveres the elderly, Zuma’s attachment to his rural traditions must be matched by an equal openness to the appetites of the country’s youth.
Three in ten South Africans are younger than 15, meaning that they did not live a day under apartheid.
Somehow Zuma must find a way to honor his own generation’s commitment to racial justice and national liberation, while empowering the masses who daily suffer the sting of class differences and yearn for material gain.