From Poverty to Power Green, Oxfam 2008 - weman

5 THE INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM FINANCEperformance nor helpful in encouraging policy pluralism andnational ownership.• Donor governments will also have to drive reform of theinstitutions themselves, starting with their governing bodies.In the concessional lending arm of the World Bank, forexample, sub-Saharan African countries represent 27 per centof all member countries but have only 8 per cent of the votes.Canada and Italy have the same voting shares as China, andBelgium has 50 per cent more votes than Mexico. 25 Moreover,the heads of the Fund and the Bank are still politicalappointees of, respectively, the EU and the USA. Until ameritocratic appointments system is introduced, it is hard tosee why any developing country should turn to the IFIs foradvice on good governance. At a staff level, the Bank and Fundalso need to improve their grasp of politics and social change,if they are to support country-led processes rather thanimpose economic blueprints.The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund stand at a historiccrossroads, similar to that which they faced after the collapse of thefixed exchange rate system in the 1970s. How they chart a new coursewill determine both their future relevance and their contribution(whether positive or negative) to the global effort to tackle povertyand inequality.DEBT CRISESDebt is a key reason why the international financial institutions exertso much leverage over poor countries. In Dickensian Britain, thedebtors’ prison awaited those who could not meet their personal orbusiness debts. Bankruptcy procedures finally superseded such grimestablishments, allowing individuals to clear their debts and rebuildtheir lives. Countries that default on their foreign borrowing, however,until very recently faced a similar fate: an interminable process ofrestructuring, dried-up access to credit, and painful squeezes on publicspending, with a drastic impact on poor people.There are at least three different sorts of crisis involving debt, eachof which requires a different response. First, in very poor countries the305