In search of the Post-Washington (dis)consensus: the ‘missing’ content of PRSPS

Abstract

The policy-making context in the ‘South’ would seem to have changed in recent years, potentially opening space for alternative voices. The international financial institutions no longer overtly insist on policy content. The ‘locally owned’ Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (prsp) has become the main vehicle for policy. Many have argued prsps represent a ‘remorphing’ of neoliberalism or the Washington Consensus as practised by the international financial institutions for much of the 1980s and 1990s. However, although much research on prsps has focused on the process of prsp production and the extent of participation, the outcome of the prsp process—the actual prsp—and its content has received relatively limited attention. This article is an exploratory piece. Taking the content of 50 prsps the following question is posed: has the prsp process opened space for something new, Stiglitz's post-Washington Consensus, or for the reproduction of the former Washington Consensus?