The arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn on attempted rape and other charges in New York over weekend has reopened long-running issues of the internal governance of international organizations, whether the IMF, World Bank, or UN system. The most immediate one, raised by l’affaire DSK, is how internal IMF personnel processes addressed earlier sexual harassment allegations raised against him. As Reuter’s reports this morning:
With its chief in the dock, the IMF now faces many questions of its own, because his character had been questioned before. In 2008, Strauss-Kahn apologised for “an error of judgment” after an affair with a female IMF economist who was his subordinate.
The Fund’s board warned him against improper conduct, but cleared him of harassment and abuse of power and kept him in his job. It will now face new scrutiny over whether that response was too weak, especially as there have been persistent rumours about Strauss-Kahn making sexual advances to women.
II
There is a background to this in IOs. Since the 1990s, international organizations came under increasing pressure to adopt what were originally – and originally sometimes derided as – American-style standards for sexual harassment within the organizations. There have been various court cases in the US and elsewhere, for example, sorting out the situations in which a US court might be able to hear a case against an American employee of an international organization; situations in which recourse is limited to internal processes; etc. During those years, there was a some amount of irritation within international organizations internally that these standards were not “European” and were an instance of “American” political correctness run amok. Over time, that argument gradually died down – but in part because the organizations reached what one UN functionary described to me (as I was researching my forthcoming book on the UN, but I had heard this first back in the late 1990s) a modus vivendi in which the standards on paper would be American, but the standards in fact would be European (whatever that means) – and the personnel process would be entirely that of the international organization.
Bottom line is that the organizations signed on paper to exquisitely tuned gender sensitivity. There were a couple of years in the mid 2000s, leading up to the 2005 UN reform when it seemed every conversation I had with UN staff on every subject would contain a pious invocation of “gender perspective.” It was obvious that this was merely an instruction passed down from senior management to all functionaries and that it was largely content-free; there was some gender affirmative action and other actual changes, but also a lot of pious invocation. On the other hand, as the rumors that swirled around DSK and various other mostly European senior staff at the IOs run by the so-called “barons” suggested, there was a policy and then there was actual behavior. One could say, and I was told repeatedly, that this was just the difference between American and European or European-influenced mores. And I thought that in at least some cases where rumors swirled, this was probably right – at least in the sense it was consensual. But there is a broader observation here.
International organizations and their staff are often in-bred and in-turned communities, whether in NYC or DC or Geneva. It’s not necessarily their doing or their preference. Many staff don’t really have the ability to mix socially with the local population even in the “headquarters” cities; they are transferred all the time, they are not from the place, it is culturally different, etc. It is a little bit like “Town-and-Gown.” I never thought it would work or be fair to anyone to do things like have blanket no-relationships rules, or anything remotely approaching that. The staff are somewhat locked into a social community that is their work world and there is not much ability to go beyond it.
This is a complaint I have often heard over the years from IO staff who would like to be more engaged locally – despite the fact that they might not be in the city for the long term. (There are, however, big differences between IOs and their staff positions; if you are with the IMF or the World Bank as an economist, you might very well be attached to DC for decades; if you are UN staff in certain kinds of positions, you might have to move more.) Kofi Annan, for all his many faults, was properly involved the cultural life of NYC – not politics, but as a patron of culture and the arts there. Mid-tier IO staff also tell me that NYC is the easiest place to integrate, DC is curiously next, and Geneva all but impossible. I can’t say for sure and I don’t know about other IO-heavy cities. And when I ask, what do you mean by “integrate,” the answer is practical – meet people, form relationships, and marry, and then send your kids to school there.
III
So for a lot of structural reasons, I don’t think the kind of rule that American businesses, fearful of litigation and scandal, sometimes tried to impose (no relationships in the workplace, period), but have become more relaxed about, could work with these organizations because social opportunities outside of “work” are limited; this is your social world. The issues, I always thought, were partly consent, but then of course the issues of favoritism and nepotism at the expense of those not sleeping with the boss. I didn’t think the issues were that different from other all-encompassing communities, like the military, and what mattered was the internal process for making sure of consent and fair treatment for everyone else. (I’m leaving entirely aside a different class of cases – UN staff, workers, and peacekeeping troops and all the many questions of sex trafficking, child sex, etc.; I’m focused on standards of harassment.)
Unfortunately, one of the most un-stated facts about international organizations is the utter inadequacy and conflict-ridden, protective and yet politicized, internal processes for dealing with personnel matters. The lack of attention from the outside is part of a larger problem that those who study IOs through the lens of international relations and law, and more so still with those attached to them as ideological or quasi-religious faith, find it very hard to look inside the organizations, and still harder to “follow the money. To look, that is, at such things as personnel management, budget, accounting, fiscal controls, etc. – all the matters that, were this a corporation or private business, for example, would be assumed to be important to understand the organization and its incentives and disincentives. There are reasons for gap – those most interested in the function of IOs in international theory, especially of an idealist kind, tend to be least familiar with basic accounting, let alone interested.
The problem is that IOs manage to have the worst of all worlds in personnel grievance management. They have staggeringly well-paid and tenured staff – if you can get such a job, otherwise it is temp contracting. They have amazingly strong employee unions on the inside (though, it must be said, not as strong as those of places in the US where they are able to make campaign contributions to essentially elect and buy the politicians who will negotiate with them at supposed arms-length).
Yet at the same time, the personnel grievance process is hugely politicized internally, especially for the most senior staff – and the earlier DSK affair would fit nicely in that mode. There is a strong “whistle-blower” policy in the IOs, in addition to these kinds of harassment policies – except when it is politicized and the whistle-blower vilified. The net result is that in cases where you don’t want the civil servant (senior or junior) protected, he or she tends to be protected; and in exactly the cases where you want them protected (for legitimate whistle-blowing on corruption, or for seeking redress for harassment, etc.), they tend not to be protected.
IV
So, on the one hand, we have DSK apologizing for an “error in judgment” and that’s the end of it. Meanwhile, over at the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz is chased out of the Bank for having scrupulously followed all the policies, making sure everyone was on notice that he had started a relationship with a then-Bank employee, deeply concerned both that no one be able to make accusations of favoritism while wanting to be clear that she should not be penalized for a consensual relationship. Wolfowitz did all the stuff one is supposed to do and then some – but the opportunity for going after him by a Bank staff and board that distinguished itself by primarily by its viciousness and naked politicization was too much to resist. The Wall Street Journal is right to make the comparison on its editorial page today:
The IMF board’s forbearance contrasts with the way the World Bank pushed out American Paul Wolfowitz as bank president on the pretext that he had secured a raise for his girl friend, though Mr. Wolfowitz had kept bank officials informed from start to finish and had not violated bank policy. The boards of both institutions are dominated by Europeans, who deployed a double standard for Mr. Strauss-Kahn as one of their own.
I wrote in defense of Wolfowitz a couple of years ago in the Financial Times. On balance I regard the Bank as a valuable global organization, and the IMF as well. Still, wading through the tenured and untouchable staff commentary on l’affaire Wolfowitz as the staff lobbied in righteous anger against having had someone as horrible as Paul Wolfowitz imposed on them by the wicked George W. Bush caused me moments of doubt. One thing I am not in doubt of, however, is that the staff of international organizations, whether the IMF, the WB, or organs of the UN, would far rather be led by a DSK – “errors of judgment” and what amounts to a droit de seigneur and $3,000 a night hotel suites and first class flights and all – than a Paul Wolfowitz. Which is one reason why international organizations are what they are.
(I will go back later and clean up some things here; got to drive to UVA now.)
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