Ideas to Action:
Independent research for global prosperity
The central message in last week’s CGD forum featuring former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo on World Bank governance reform was “let’s get real.” From whom and from where will come any impetus to take up the Zedillo Commission’s good ideas? Answer: G-20, with the United States in the lead.
This is a joint post with Nancy Birdsall and Bill Savedoff.
During a panel discussion we hosted at the World Bank and IMF annual meetings in Istanbul last month on mutual accountability and outcomes in aid, Max Lawson from Oxfam, in referring to COD Aid, said that CGD appears to have more effective publicity strategies and reach than the European Commission. While we do have a (small but) stellar communications team, our ideas spread far primarily because other organizations are seriously engaged in exploring and debating new ideas like the ones we have proposed (otherwise our tiny team would be sleepless, to say the least!).
One case in point is the recent COD Aid briefing paper issued by the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD) – a large international development organization based in the UK which raises about 75% of its funds from individual supporters.
Before investigating the source of the below quote, read it and guess to what it refers – it might surprise you how broadly applicable it is.
It’s a classic American dilemma: How does a superpower fix problems in a faraway country without dictating policies in a way that ultimately enfeebles the very people we are trying to help?
[Update: I posted slides from my turn as a discussant for this paper at the Brookings Institution on January 25, 2010.]
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