SubscribeThe World Bank
So in the late afternoon we had our last meeting. I must confess, I was a little nervous, since all of us were exhausted, that we wouldn’t make it through the meeting without making a horrible impression having dozing off students listen to these important people. Fortunately, however, the meeting was so interesting that we all not only stayed awake, but were on the edge of our seats. It was the icing on the cake of the day.
Ronald MacLean-Abaroa, Senior Governance & Decentralization Specialist, the World Bank Institute (WBISD) and Former Mayor of La Paz, Bolivia.
Angelica Silvero, Coordinator, Visitors Briefings Program
Angelica Silvero gave us an overview of the World Bank explaining that it is a financial institution, and she took us through the history. I thought it was interesting that she explained the evolution of the World Bank through the high points and the low points and bad reputation that it has passed through. Her explanation really made me really feel as if the people at the World Bank are sincerely trying to help development, contradicting my previous William Easterly-esque feelings towards the organization. She recommended the book by Paul Collier, which I as well recommend, The Bottom Billion, if one is interested in International Development.
Ronald MacLean-Abaroa was a very interesting man and it was a wonderful opportunity to get to meet him. He once was the mayor of La Paz, and he revealed his experiences trying to stop corruption in the city. It was a very interesting presentation, which had as a bottom line: corruption is just a symptom of poverty and fiscal disorganization. You can’t stop corruption by criminalizing it, but instead one must stop corruption by addressing the root causes. MacLean-Abaroa also revealed that a strong conceptual framework and organization lead to success in policy implementation and political change.
In 1985, La Paz, Bolivia faced systematic corruption in the municipal government. Mr. MacLean-Aboroa explained that the clerk at the mayor’s office was one of the most powerful and rich men in La Paz, due to the corruption and his power to get things done. Mr. MacLean Aboroa knew he had to stop this corruption at the root, and so he began diagnosis workshops with senior officials in order to find out what the corruption looked like and why it was happening. He then developed and implemented a framework to help dissolve the corruption.
This framework was organized into 5 parts:
1) The municipality needed to stop cronyism and so it started to fire unproductive agents strengthen merit-based recruitment.
2) He raised the salaries to reward the good agents.
3) The administration investigated each office’s efforts and results, improving auditing and information gathering to find corrupt behavior.
4) MacLean Aboroa enhanced the accountability by restructuring the relationship between the citizens and the municipal agents.
5) He then got the municipality set out to change the corporate culture in each aspect
of municipal government. He retrained the agents using a code of ethics and taught the agents what the ìmoral costsî of corruption.
Now Mr. MacLean-Aboroa works for the World Bank Institute, and does consulting around the world. He was such an interesting man and gave an engaging talk. Every single one of the us “Jamaican delegates” were so engaged that we all forgot to take notes!
For more information on Mr. MacLean-Aboroa see: www.innovations.harvard.edu/cache/documents/165/16574.pdf
