The Washington consensus meets the global backlash: shifting debates and policies

Abstract

During the final two decades of the twentieth century, development theory and practice were dominated by a neoliberal ‘Washington Consensus’. This article analyzes the shifting debate over that Consensus. The article focuses on the current ‘elite’ debate about the Consensus in an attempt to gauge the extent of change. It does so by coding primary research materials according to specific Consensus tenets to analyze (1) the individual and collective positions of several prominent, elite actors termed the ‘break-aways’; and (2) the editorial positions of leading publications that serve as key, elite ‘voices’. Washington Consensus tenets are broken into five categories: trade liberalization, deregulation, privatization, financial liberalization and debt-crisis management. This analysis of primary texts leads to the Conclusion that the ‘Washington Consensus’ no longer prevails as an elite northern Consensus, and we are presently not only in a period of debate, but in the midst of a paradigm shift. Robin Broad is associate professor, International Development Program, School of International Service, American University. Her most recent book—Global Backlash: Citizen Initiatives for a Just World Economy (Rowman and Littlefield, 2002)—combines her analysis with 45 excerpts to demonstrate that opponents to the current corporate-led globalization present viable, sophisticated alternatives. Her earliest book—Development Debacle: The World Bank in the Philippines, co-authored with Walden Bello and others in 1982—was one of the first books to present a case-study of World Bank lending. She is author as well of Plundering Paradise: The Struggle for the Environment in the Philippines and Unequal Alliance: The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Philippines. Dr Broad is widely published and has received numerous grants and awards for her writing and teaching. She has previously worked as an international economist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the US House of Representatives and the US Treasury Department. She has lived and worked in the Philippines. She received her PhD in development studies from Princeton University.