The World Bank enters The Bob Zadek Show mainly as the producer of the Doing Business index, a ranking of how easy it is to do business around the world, and as an example of the large donor institutions that guests criticized. Across three episodes the Bank is discussed by Michael Strong, Dr. Mark Lutter and Matt Warner, each of whom treats the index or the institution as evidence in a broader argument about poverty, regulation and foreign aid.
The Doing Business index
Michael Strong described the World Bank’s Doing Business index as a ranking of how easy it is to do business around the world, and used it to argue that poor countries are poor because they still have heavily controlled, government-controlled economies. He said that most of the bottom 50 countries on the index are in Africa, alongside places such as Venezuela, and that Senegal, where his wife is from, is one of the bottom 30 Michael Strong on Creating a World in Which All Humanity Flourishes (2017).
Strong credited the index with drawing attention to a problem he said would otherwise have gone unnoticed. He argued that if the World Bank had not created the Doing Business index and Hernando de Soto had not written The Mystery of Capital, quite likely nobody would have even noticed the developing world was massively over-regulated. He added that the index was created by a former Bulgarian who had been in Eastern Europe under communism and knew what a mess governments were Michael Strong on Creating a World in Which All Humanity Flourishes (2017).
Strong also invoked the index in a discussion of whether enlightened government could supply rule of law and enforcement of property rights. He said that when he has talked to progressive professors about the evidence, they are unaware of it, and that when he points out the facts they do not deny them. He said he and his wife met Peter Singer in person to explain that the developing world is over-regulated, and that Singer had been completely unaware of it Michael Strong on Creating a World in Which All Humanity Flourishes (2017).
Charter cities and the index as a benchmark
Dr. Mark Lutter, discussing charter cities and free cities, used the Doing Business index as a comparative benchmark for sub-Saharan Africa. He said that in sub-Saharan Africa the country that ranks highest on the World Bank Doing Business Index, which he described as an index relatively similar to economic freedom, ranks about 50. He suggested that if somebody creates a charter city that does a little bit better on the index, ranking 40, it would suddenly become a magnet for every smart, entrepreneurial person in sub-Saharan Africa The End of Nation-States? (2018).
Lutter also described an exchange involving the World Bank. He said he has a friend at the World Bank who mentioned that a country in Africa had proposed creating a charter city to the World Bank, and that the conversation at the World Bank was whether the country knew what a charter city was or was just using the right buzzwords. Lutter offered this as an illustration of how the idea of charter cities had not penetrated enough minds, and of the coordination problem among the groups he said needed to be brought together The End of Nation-States? (2018).
The critique of top-down development
Matt Warner, president of the Atlas Network, addressed the World Bank as part of a broader critique of large global aid and development organizations. He said there are good people working in the USAID and the World Bank, that he has gotten to know lots of these people very well, that they are super smart and feel a real calling to be out helping the world improve, and that their hearts are in the right place. The problem, he said, is that the model itself is extremely problematic How to leverage resources within the liberty movement (2020).
Warner’s objection was that donor countries cannot get out of their own way when they make political decisions about economic development somewhere else. He said that when a country is the donor, it cannot help but include its own values, opinions and priorities, and that many taxpayers would say that is absolutely correct, since their money is being spent abroad. Those priorities, he argued, may be at odds with what is actually at the margin the next development opportunity or milestone transition an economy needs to achieve sustained development How to leverage resources within the liberty movement (2020).
Warner connected this to a movement he called “Shift the Power,” associated with the Global Community Fund and the hashtag ShiftThePower, whose premise he said was correct: that development leadership should move away from wealthy governments and wealthy NGOs toward local independent institutions, NGOs and think tanks in developing countries. He said he supports that and that it matches the Atlas Network model, but that the movement’s top two priorities for helping people in developing countries are solving climate change and improving the inequality problem as they see it. He doubted that projects green-lighted to spend millions of dollars on inequality and climate change in developing countries would be the kind of industrial, technological, free-market opportunities that help an economy achieve an enduring standard of living How to leverage resources within the liberty movement (2020).
Across episodes
The excerpts show no development in the treatment of the World Bank across episodes. All three discussions occur in a single stretch of the show’s run, and each guest uses the Bank for a different purpose rather than responding to an earlier treatment: Strong cites the Doing Business index as evidence that over-regulation causes poverty, Lutter cites the same index as a benchmark a charter city might beat, and Warner cites the institution as an example of a donor model whose priorities are set by wealthy countries. No guest in these excerpts refers to another guest’s argument, and the excerpts contain no exchange between them on the subject.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not describe the World Bank’s founding, governance, lending operations, membership or headquarters, and they do not name any World Bank official. They do not state the full methodology or publication history of the Doing Business index beyond the remarks quoted above, nor do they give the index’s rankings for any country other than those named. The excerpts also do not say whether the index was discontinued or altered, and they contain no response from the World Bank to the criticisms voiced by Strong, Lutter or Warner.