choice.”^99 Above all, both sides disagreed over the proper role of
states and markets. For the Bretton Woods institutions, most of the
time “government intervention distorts and/or rigidifies markets and
makes them function less well.”^100 Kofi Annan, on the contrary, held
that “there is no autopilot, no magic of the marketplace,” and called
for stronger public institutions, able to compensate the losers in
globalization.^101
Behind the new development consensus, the reform agenda pro-
posed by the Bretton Woods institutions and by the UN continued to
express the traditional clash of values between the left and the right.
The financial institutions systematically emphasized the policy space
already available to developing countries. They thus highlighted these
countries’ capacity for “self-help,” as well as their leaders’ need to
pay more attention to good governance, corruption, fiscal adjustment,
trade liberalization, and private-sector development. The World Bank,
notably, drew a clear line between “good-policy” and “poor-policy”
countries.^102 Global reforms considered by the Bretton Woods insti-
tutions remained limited in scope. The WTO largely focused on the
opening of domestic markets. For its part, the IMF initiated a debate
on a new international financial architecture, but discussions were
essentially confined to issues such as greater policy transparency,
stronger surveillance mechanisms, and improved interorganizational
collaboration. The lack of representation of Southern countries in
the Fund’s governing bodies was recognized as a problem and small
changes in voting procedures were implemented, but a genuine
restructuring of the decision-making process did not materialize.
(^99) Anne O. Krueger, “’Tis Not Too Late to Seek a Newer World: What
Globalization Offers the Poor,” address by the IMF First Deputy Managing
Director to the Oxford Union, Oxford, May 9, 2005, p. 2 (www.imf.org/
external/np/speeches/2005/050905.htm); Ko ̈hler, “Working for a Better
100 Globalization,” p. 2.
Anne O. Krueger, “The Time is Always Ripe: Rushing Ahead with Economic
Reform in Africa,” lecture by the IMF First Deputy Managing Director to the
Economic Society of South Africa, June 9, 2005, p. 3 (www.imf.org/external/
101 np/speeches/2005/060905b.htm).
Annan, “Millennium Development Goals Have Unprecedented Political
102 Support.”
Ian Goldin, Halsey Rogers, and Nicholas Stern,The Role and Effectiveness of
Development Assistance: Lessons from World Bank Experience, Washington,
DC, World Bank, 2002, p. xix (http://wbln0018.worldbank.org/eurvp/
web.nsf/Pages/ PaperþbyþIanþGoldin/$File/GOLDIN.PDF).
Twenty-first-century rapprochement 193