David de Ferranti’s book published in 2024 “Reformers in International Development: Five Remarkable Lives” is an enjoyable read of the career journeys of five fascinating people. The book does include an implicit assumption that international development and the Bretton Woods system on which much of it is built, will continue and “reform” would be natural .
For de Ferranti “reformers” are people who follow intentional and gradual approaches for changing or improving a system and institutions, to make them function more efficiently without having to completely dismantle them. On the other hand, radical reformers want to dismantle old institutions swiftly and to create new and transformative systems. Revolutionary reformers seek to completely overthrow and replace the existing system entirely.
David de Ferranti did not set out to defend “international development”. However, in my conversations about reform and reformers OF and IN International Development, it inevitably turns to what exactly is it and who are the people calling for reform of the Bretton Woods system of international development. IMF Quotas, WTO Dispute Settlement, and Conditionality around IMF and World Bank loans seem to be issues. The leading advocates for reform come from the ranks of the BRICS, the Global South, the G24 Group, the EU, and more recently, the Trump Administration.
From a wide range of colleagues with whom he has worked and known in various capacities, de Ferranti chose as his five reformers IN international development, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala of Nigeria, Domingo Cavallo from Argentina; Ela Bhatt from India; Dzingai Mutumbuka from Zimbabwe; and Adolfo Figeroa from Peru as his reformers IN international development. He developed six keys to understanding how they responded to the real-life question of “What would we do in dire circumstances, terrible quandaries, and life and death situations? The keys are that they all have Good Minds; exercise Good Judgement; are endowed with superior People Skills; have Charisma; are prudent in Risk Taking; and live by deeply-rooted Values.
The six-point framework is revealing, but I did struggle to find the “reformers” OF the international development system in addition to those who worked IN international development . Ngozi, Dzingai, and Domingo all worked as Government Ministers within the Bretton Woods system. They were conformists because they tried to get their governments to do what was ‘acceptable’ within that framework. Ela and Arturo were ‘revolutionary’ because they stayed outside of “international development” and instead changed mindsets.
David himself joined the Bank in 1981 and served as the Vice President for the Human Development Network and later as Regional Vice President for Latin America and the Caribbean until he retired in 2005. His impressive career coincided with the evolution of “international development” theory and praxis in the World Bank. In the 1970s, a reluctant and skeptical audience of macro-economists and “hard” infrastructure technical specialists grudgingly accepted the “soft” social sectors as priority areas for development. In the 1980s, with the emphasis on “policy matters”, economists hailed the Structural Adjustment approach. David de Ferranti was on the frontlines of these internal debates on social sectors and structural adjustment. It is here that he joins the ranks as one of the truly unsung reformers OF international development. His leadership in defending and overseeing social sector research, policy work, and financial operations to countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, was brilliant and changed attitudes and approaches OF international development. His years at the helm of World Bank adjustment lending in Latin America were historic and the lessons learned there has reformed the practice of Adjustment lending.
David reflects in this book “Superiors and higher-ups in the Bank in that era still tended to be graduates of the elite universities of the US or Europe …..Recruits who had not received that rarified best-on-the-planet academic training, moved up more slowly, if at all. Effort to help them were not always taken seriously. ……resistance to it was systemic. ….bias, against women or people of color, could escape notice and remediation. ….the Bank has gone a long way towards addressing the heritage of colonialism and white supremacy….. I regret to this day that I did not do nearly enough during my time to challenge the bias that limited the advancement of Dzingai and others like him”.
David de Ferranti is a decent man of substance and experience. With a career inside and outside of government and the Bank, he has been a reformer not only IN but OF international development. The next edition of this book should be retitled “Reformers in International Development: Six Remarkable Lives”.
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The book author, David de Ferranti is a former vice president of the Human Development Network and of the Latin America and the Caribbean Region at the World Bank.
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KEYWORDS international development, Reform
Nice Summary.
Thanks Richard