The ferocity and passion of attacks on them, as the preeminent symbols of globalization run amok, is difficult to understand and harder still to defend. By failing to come to terms with the emotional undercurrents of the opposition to the symbolism, however, both risk being condemned to continual attacks. More than anything else, the street protests in Seattle represented a rebellion against the loss of control over destiny, 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. Control over destiny was lost over many decades. The realization of the loss coincided with the hype over globalization, which then became the focus of all the grievances.

The absence of chief executives from developing countries heightens their sense of distance from the major financial institutions. (The Bank is always headed by an American and the IMF by a European.) Many in developing countries believe that if every chief executive's understanding of poverty is theoretical, then how can the institutions' remedies reflect the real world of operational choices?

Globalization is not rooted in IMF or Bank prescriptions. There is a real gap between the Bank's efforts to facilitate adjustment to the pressures and costs of globalization, and the strongly held perceptions that both the Bank and the IMF have tried to foist globalization on unwilling but weak (because poor) countries. Some analysts believe that the problem lies not with their policies, but in their insensitivity to legitimate fears and genuine concerns about the loss of policy autonomy, the risks to infant domestic industries from giant multinational enterprises, and the political fallout of harsh economic medicines for governments that are simultaneously under pressure to tighten budgets, eliminate subsidies, eschew populism, and yet democratize and be more accessible to civil society.

The 1960s were full of such glorious phrases as take-off, steady growth, alliance for progress and the critical minimum effort. Foreign aid, channeled into poverty reducing programs under the active direction of the World Bank, would be used to short-circuit the century or so it had taken the Western countries to change from subsistence agrarian economies to highly industrialized ones. The experience and expertise of the West, it was believed a generation ago, could be readily transferred to the rest through financial and technical aid.

In time disenchantment set in in the donor countries because of perceptions of aid simply disappearing into the development black hole. Recipient countries too were disillusioned at efforts by former colonizers to perpetuate economic, political and cultural ties through directed aid. Sometimes the solution of a surplus disposal problem -- for example, food that could neither be consumed at home nor sold in international markets -- was described as aid. At other times foreign aid was a disguised subsidy to home producers whose goods were not competitive in world markets. The Bank and the IMF have been caught in the crossfire between the developing, aid receipient countries and the industrialized, aid donor countries. Their prescriptions came to be attacked for:

• the application of identical remedies regardless of each country's particular circumstances;
• the support of programs that were theoretically elegant but did not work in practice;
• the doctrinaire application of a market-oriented, free-enterprise philosophy;
• harming the poor, the weak and the vulnerable by the imposition of austerity measures;
• ignoring the views of developing-country governments while being unable to influence the views of rich governments;
• promoting programs of investment that caused serious environmental damage.

Followeing the end of the Cold War and the fall from grace of the command economy model, the prominent role of the World Bank in trying to end poverty in developing countries gave way to high profile efforts by the IMF to manage the transition in formerly Soviet republics under the free market ideology. A decade later, there has been at least a partial reaction. Many have concluded, reluctantly, that the market is not all efficient, does not necessarily lead to equitable outcomes, and cannot substitute for some sort of a compact between shareholders, workers, consumers, citizens, and nature. We may produce, sell and buy in the economy; we live in society.

Each crisis has produced calls for major reform of the architecture of international financial management. The two Bretton Woods institutions have proven themselves to be as immune to serious structural reform as the UN. Confusion abounds over areas of demarcation between the mandates and agendas of the Bank, the IMF and the UN, not to mention regional development banks. Instead of synergy, coordination and efficiency in the delivery of services and the attainment of complementary goals, there is competition, overlap and duplication.

Hence the calls for the two institutions to return to their core competencies, namely poverty alleviation for the World Bank and financial crisis management for the IMF. They could also promote the expression of contrarian views in internal policy debates as a means of challenging the prevailing orthodoxy, also known as the Washington consensus. And they should promote some devloping-country faces as the visible public personae of senior management. This will help to give a human face, in the target client states, to the ongoing adjustments in the central planks of policy.

Ramesh Thakur is vice rector of the United Nations University. These are his personal views.

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