The World Bank employs many of the best and brightest development professionals. The International Monetary Fund attracts some of the ablest brains in the financial sector. Established at Bretton Woods in 1944, both have generally been blessed with exceptional chief executives. But now, wrestling with a legacy of changing priorities and strategies, and a resulting long-term erosion of trust, the World Bank, at least, is adjusting its image and its approach.
The ferocity of the attacks on these two organizations as the pre-eminent symbols of globalization run amok is hard to understand and harder still to defend. Yet by failing to come to terms with the emotional undercurrents of the opposition, both bodies risk inviting continued attacks. The street protests in Seattle last year represented above all a rebellion against a perceived loss of control -- both of individuals over their personal lives and of nations over their political and economic affairs. It was a gut reaction to the sense of helplessness against forces too large to control and too remote to connect with. It took decades for this feeling to develop. But realization of the loss coincided with the hype over globalization, which then became the focus of all grievances.
The absence of chief executives from developing countries heightens those countries' sense of remoteness from the major financial institutions. (The World Bank is always headed by an American and the IMF by a European.) Many people in developing countries ask how, if the chief executives' understanding of poverty is theoretical, can the institutions' proposed remedies reflect the real world of operational choices?