Global Crisis and History Repeating: Three Historical Stages of the Norm of 'Modern Development' within the Regulatory Framework of the Bretton Woods Institutions

Abstract

This paper explores the consequences of embracing the regulatory framework of the Bretton Woods Institutions as the political landscape from which a global pattern of “modern development” historically nurtured. With the enhanced influence of the deregulation of financial capital, the market structure is increasingly capable of tightening up the strings of social systems. The distrust of global debt rating agencies over the credit of the United States, Spain, Greece or Italy, represents the upcoming reality for core western territories engaged in an historical process of “development”. Rather than representing a global economic crisis, the present paper argues that such events are natural to a cleansing stage of the prominence of the market over social projects within the nation-state sovereignty: a phenomenon endured by peripheral economies during the second half of the 20th century.