Embedding the New Basics: the Delivery Devices and Political Technologies of SIN

Abstract

The previous chapter looked at socio-institutional neoliberalism’s (SIN) new prescriptive set — the new basics — and its theoretical foundations: new institutional economics (NIE). The purpose of this chapter is to detail the other half of SIN, what are described in this book as ‘delivery devices’ and ‘political technologies’: that is, those mechanisms and methods that are used by the Bank in its attempt to embed the new basics. In short, SIN builds in particular delivery devices and complementary political technologies in an effort to attend to the biggest frustration of the engineers of market society: implementation.1 These elements in SIN are critical in distinguishing between the Washington consensus and the PWC. In the past, neoliberalism had, of course, deployed particular delivery devices in the form of projects and programmes (notably those of ‘structural adjustment’). However, with the ascendancy of SIN, the nature of these delivery devices has changed. Indeed, many of these devices seek nothing less than to construct an all-enveloping institutional set (covered in the previous chapter) where previously they simply demanded certain specific policy shifts, such as the pursuit of fiscal austerity or liberalised trade. Furthermore, and crucially, these delivery devices are now coupled with political methods and processes (‘political technologies’) that are intently focussed upon implementation, in part by building coalitions of support through partnerships and participatory arrangements and circumventing and containing reform resistance. In tandem with the new basics, these delivery devices and political technologies imply significant ramifications for state-society relations, with SIN’s composite form incorporating both a normative blueprint for the remodelling of state and society (to establish market society) and a form of anti-pluralist politics to achieve that blueprint.KeywordsCivil SocietyCivic EngagementDelivery DeviceRecipient CountryDebt ReliefThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.