The Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper of Honduras and the Transformations of Neoliberalism

Abstract

A decade into the PRSP (Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper) process, this article provides a comprehensive look at the World Bank's development approach and demonstrates that recent changes in development policy have resulted in the emergence of a more inclusively oriented neoliberal development regime. In doing so, the article traces the important “discontinuities within continuity” between structural adjustment policies (SAPs) and PRSPs, and excavates the transformative elements of the Post-Washington Consensus (PWC) and its most visible policy tool, the PRSP. In an attempt to make sense of this discontinuity within continuity, the article draws on and conceptually develops the notion of inclusive neoliberalism, and uses a case study of Honduras’ experience with the PRSP process to empirically substantiate the claims surrounding the transformations of neoliberalism. Inclusive neoliberalism arguably represents a new phase of more socially interventionist and ameliorative forms of neoliberal governance that selectively combine little-modified macroeconomic policies with more interventionist and expansive social policies to attenuate the social impacts of neoliberal reforms and prop up failing market mechanisms.