Adjusting to multipolarity in the World Bank: Ducking and diving, wriggling and squirming

This essay examines the efforts of the World Bank to translate the rising economic weight of some developing countries into a larger voice in the governance of the organization. In a speech in April 2010, World Bank president Robert Zoellick argued that the advent of “a new, fast-evolving multipolar world economy” required fundamental reforms of the World Bank itself, including in the balance of power between developed countries and emerging countries Shortly after the speech the World Bank presented a set of allegedly far-reaching proposals on what it called “voice reform”, to be endorsed by its Board of Governors, the culmination of a process of negotiation begun years before. Voice reform had several components, of which the central and most contentious one was voting reform to give developing and transition countries (DTCs) more voting power in the Bank’s governance. The Governors approved the proposals at the 2010 Spring Meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). The headlines went around the world that the World Bank had approved a major increase in the governance role of its borrowing member states, partly by redistributing voting power in their favour. The Bank had successfully translated changes in economic weight in the world economy into changes in political weight within the organization.