Wolfensohn was adroit in responding to the campaign. He quickly announced important internal reforms which, as a first step, blunted the force of some of the criticisms. He then, as a second step, signalled a major change in the culture of the institution by announcing that the Bank would actively attack corruption in developing countries.
Previously, the international community had been inclined to tiptoe around the problem of corruption in developing countries. Wolfensohn confronted the consensus. In his presidential address to the annual meeting of the Bank in Washington in 1996, before all of the ministers and delegates from member countries, he denounced the “cancer of corruption”. The result was twofold: a kind of intellectual dam was broken, and it quickly became more acceptable to discuss the problem of corruption in global development programs. And the World Bank suddenly appeared to be transformed and began to be seen as leading an international crusade against bad governance in developing countries.
But the problem that quickly arose was that the World Bank could not do much about the issue of corruption.
Mallaby observed that:By speaking out … Wolfensohn had scored a brilliant rhetorical coup, but what was the World Bank supposed to do about it? Wolfensohn did not have an answer to that question.
Jim Wolfensohn’s knowledge bank | The Interpreter (lowyinstitute.org)
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