From The Washington Post
By Sabastian Mallaby

Nine months into his tenure as president of the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz has made headlines mainly by provoking a staff backlash. Neoconservative commissars are seizing control! (Actually, Wolfowitz has a grand total of four Republicans in his entourage.) The World Bank’s agenda is being hijacked by a Bush man! (Actually, Wolfowitz has resisted the Bush administration’s bad policies on debt relief and climate change.) The previous World Bank president, James Wolfensohn, made no secret of his intention to blow up the institution when he arrived in 1995. Wolfowitz’s accession has been comparatively mild, but his reputation as the architect of the Iraq war colors the response to him.

Meanwhile, the staff backlash is obscuring something interesting. In the past few months, there have been hints of fresh thinking on corruption. Now the evidence has reached critical mass: The change appears to be genuine.

First, a bit of context. The World Bank used to avoid all mention of corruption, believing it should stay out of “politics.” This was absurd: The bank had long been telling borrowers how to structure their budgets — a clearly political subject — and corruption can’t be separated from the bank’s development mission.

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