Introduction: Neo-liberal Development Policy in Asia beyond the Post-Washington Consensus

Abstract

This paper introduces a special issue on contemporary neo-liberal development policy in Asia. The paper contextualises the current state of neo-liberal development policy as having moved beyond two earlier phases: one that intended to limit the state and unleash market forces and, subsequently, one that was oriented towards remaking the state in an idealised liberal market image. While building off its forebears, contemporary neo-liberal development policy – what we describe as “market building” – displays a new array of foci and modalities that not only continue to target the state as a site of reform (though often in novel ways) but which also regularly work around the state to directly cultivate private sector activity. Moreover, a product of its times, market building incorporates an increased emphasis upon risk and risk management, with risk to programme implementation and capital now central concerns within the neo-liberal agenda. However, just as with earlier phases of neo-liberalism, the market-building agenda is both subjected to and produces particular patterns of politics. As the papers in this special issue show, perhaps nowhere is this reality more interesting than in Asia, where new and emboldened patterns of accumulation are evident and, where too, nation-states are no longer as materially dependent on organisations such as the World Bank as before.