post-Washington Consensus Research Articles

Bringing Them All Back Home? Dollar Diminution and U.S. Power

U.S. power is facing new macroeconomic constraints. They derive from a basic and generally underappreciated shift in U.S. engagement with the global macroeconomic order, which also complicates inte...

From Microfinance to Inclusive Financial Markets: The Challenge of Social Regulation

Policy towards microfinance has undergone a shift away from building financial institutions focused on serving poor people to an “inclusive” agenda for financial sector development, operationalized by some donors in an approach entitled “Making Markets Work for the Poor”. This approach is located in New Institutional Economics and the enabling environment focus of the post-Washington Consensus. Despite the way in which this inclusion agenda echoes social exclusion discourse, it engages with a residualist rather than relational understanding of poverty. This leads to an analytical disjuncture between its discourse and analysis, overlooking the root causes of poverty and exclusion in relational processes. Arising from this is the failure to recognize that developing institutions and “enabling” environments require an understanding of social institutions and their influence as social regulatory structures. The author illustrates how analysis can proceed to address this disjuncture using the example of gender relations.

Governance, Representation and International Aid

The growth of the postwar 20th century international aid architecture has generated much debate over the successes and failures of aid, its changing forms and its challenges. This article uses this aid landscape to explore the representational or discursive power and authority of the aid donor over the aid recipient. It suggests that representations about what aid does, its modalities and dispensations reproduce a hegemonic discourse and that representational authority in diagnosing aid’s problems and prescribing solutions resides generally on one side of the aid binary. It thus focuses on the hierarchical or asymmetric relations of power implied by such a binary, on the way development aid in particular has come to shape self-understandings of donors in relation to recipients, and on the discursive labour that enables such a construction. It also explores how the post-Washington consensus on poverty eradication has embedded neoliberal solutions to development. The reproduction of the hegemonic aid discourse is examined in reference to NGOs involved in the dispensing of aid in Southeast Asia by drawing on scholarly literature and field research in Southeast Asia and Washington DC.

Market rebalancing of global production networks in the Post-Washington Consensus globalizing era: Transformation of export-oriented development in China

ABSTRACTThe current global financial crisis has prompted researchers to revisit the export-oriented development models, known as the ‘Washington Consensus’ paradigm, that have prevailed in East Asia during the past few decades. Host domestic markets have been generally neglected in the conceptual construct and empirical analysis of export-oriented development. Drawing upon the global production networks (GPNs) perspective, the study advances an evolutionary framework to shed light on the rising domestic market in China as emerging dynamics of regional transformation in contemporary economic globalization. The study is conducted based on updated investigations of the market rebalancing of transnational corporations (TNCs) in China, and particularly the Pearl River Delta (PRD), in response to the post-crisis global–local interaction. It argues that the institutional and network embeddedness of TNCs in the processing trade regime have hampered their ‘recoupling’ with the domestic market and ‘decoupling’ from external markets. Instead, a domestic market oriented production network is emerging, driven by strategic contract manufacturers through relocation to inland China. As a pilot attempt to articulate the domestic market in the GPN framework, this study urges more research to reflect the implications of the restructuring of GPNs and market reorientation of TNCs for reshaping regional trajectories in the post-Washington Consensus global economy.

The ‘Diaspora option’, migration and the changing political economy of development

ABSTRACT Influenced by the recognition of the social and economic value of migrant exchanges, the shift to a Post-Washington Consensus, and the rise of India and China as emerging economies – the ‘Diaspora option’ is becoming a significant component of the development strategies of countries with large migrant populations across Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia and Eastern Europe. In this paper we examine the political economy within which the Diaspora option has emerged and the broader implications of the discursive and material ways that migrants are being incorporated as professionalized partners in development. Drawing on a case study of the World Bank's Africa Diaspora Program we examine the underlying assumptions, ideologies and silences upon which this policy option rests. We conclude that the emerging Diaspora option should be approached more critically because the current celebration of these strategies obscures the selective and narrow neoliberal orientation; the assumptions that they make about the nature of diasporic engagement, and their increasing reliance on migrant populations to shoulder the investment risks associated with social transformation.

Consenso y pos-consenso de Washington: dos generaciones de reformas incompletas

La dimensión perdida de las reformas emprendidas tanto por el énfasis macro-económico del Consenso de Washington, como por el tenor institucional del pos-Consenso radica en lo político y lo social. La pretensión de armonización de ambas generaciones de reformas ha fallado en reconocer la centralidad política de los actores en los procesos en los que toman parte activa, ignorando el carácter intencional, contingente e impredecible que logran imprimirle.

The G20 development consensus: an African perspective

In critical theoretical paradigms, serious commitment to the concept of development as a tool for social change epitomises or intimates an alternative to the dominant ideologies and paradigms born out of economic liberalism, blamed for the existence of affluent centres and poverty-stricken peripheries in the world system. In development policy, these paradigms are also known as the Washington Consensus, which is a bone of contention with liberals proclaiming its triumph after the collapse of the Communist bloc, and critical theorists declaring that the world is ripe for an alternative to the neoliberal consensus. For this reason many, especially in the developing world and in Africa, have been anticipating the birth of a post-Washington consensus. The announcement in November 2010 of the Seoul Development Consensus by the G20, a group of 20 significant economies bridging the North–South divide, has raised hopes that this influential network has begun to think about an alternative policy consensus and paradigm. This article assesses, on the basis of a critical analysis of available documents, whether indeed the Seoul Consensus is a post-Washington consensus.

Beyond ‘Poverty Reduction through Good Governance’: The New Political Economy of Development in Africa

The new political economy of development, characterised by the rising powers' new resource finds in many poor countries and the financial crisis, has driven development ideas and practices towards a paradigm shift, moving it beyond the post-Washington Consensus which marked the high point of development's ‘Poverty Reduction through Good Governance’ agenda. This has important implications for the extent to which developing countries remain governed by the institutional and ideological imperatives of development. Optimists suggest that this could herald a new era of sovereignty that enables African countries to take fuller control of their governance and development priorities, including a shift towards a ‘southern consensus’ around structural transformation, whilst pessimists argue that the hegemony of orthodox development ideas has only been partially reordered and that new problems of sovereignty are now emerging. Insights from Uganda suggest that both of these scenarios are currently unfolding, leaving the outcomes uncertain and much to play for. What remains of the ‘good governance’ agenda has yet to adapt itself to this new politics of development, which requires the emergence of new forms of developmental state in Africa.

Economic Growth and Inequality: The New Post-Washington Consensus*

The debate on economic policy has developed significantly in the past decade. The so-called Washington Consensus, which dictated most of the solutions proposed by international financial organizations, began to be questioned when a large number of emerging economies reduced their reliance on multilateral debt. The crisis of 2008 and 2009 accelerated the process of reflection on the prescriptive nature of the policy proposals advocated by monetarists, with their insistence on a uniform view as if all situations were alike. This has been termed ideology, and the ideology associated with the Washington Consensus has failed even in its methodological principles, as clearly demonstrated by the internal debate within organizations such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. This article reviews the various internal arguments of the international financial organizations, and provides a critique of preconstructed models involving a return to Keynesian economics. It ends with an optimistic view of the broadening and democratization of the debate on economic policies, termed the new post-Washington Consensus.

The State of the State in Southeast Asia: Contention, Globalization, and State Capacity

Delusions of Development: The World Bank and the Post-Washington Consensus in Southeast Asia. By Carroll Toby. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2010. 288 pp., $85.00 hardcover (ISBN-13: 978-0230229556). No Man's Land: Globalization, Territory, and Clandestine Groups in Southeast Asia. By Hastings Justin V.. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010. 256 pp., $22.95 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0801476792). Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia. By Slater Dan. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 342 pp., $28.99 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0521165457). Southeast Asia has been an extraordinarily fruitful region for building theory in comparative politics, inspiring for instance Furnivall's (1948) concept of plural society, Geertz' (1977) work on primordial sentiments and nationalism, Pye's (1962) formulation of political culture, the debate between Popkin's (1979) rational peasants and Scott's moral economy, Scott's (1977) later (1987) work on everyday forms of resistance, and Anderson's (1993) imagined communities. The region's exceptional diversity, both between and within countries, demands sophisticated comparisons. Scholars of Southeast Asia invariably are forced to be aware of dramatic variations found in the region, even when focusing on a single case or (as Anderson does) denying the possibility of comparative work altogether. The present volumes all fit within this comparative tradition. Each uses the comparative method to investigate variation in the effectiveness of Southeast Asian states, using it to address post-Cold War concerns about state capacity, state failure, and sovereignty. Dan Slater's Ordering Power: Contentious Politics and Authoritarian Leviathans in Southeast Asia is an example of comparative historical sociology in the tradition of Reinhard Bendix (1980), Barrington Moore (1967), and Theda Skocpol (1979). Slater's central question is why some authoritarian countries in Southeast Asia developed strong states while others did not. His answer is that strong states developed where urban elites were threatened from below by strongly mobilized lower-class movements. Taking the literature on contentious politics as his starting point, Slater points out that mass mobilization from below can inspire defensive collective action among elites. When effective contentious politics unifies elites, they delegate to governments the authority and resources to crack down. Episodes of large-scale contentious politics thus have the effect of creating strong authoritarian states. Contentious politics can bring down authoritarian regimes only when the regime itself is perceived by elites as being responsible for provoking disorder and …

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

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.

Working On, Through and Around the State: The Deep Marketisation of Development in the Asia-Pacific

This article describes an important new push by international financial institutions towards broadening and deepening capitalist social relations in the underdeveloped world in ways well beyond Washington Consensus structural adjustment or even post-Washington Consensus forms of institutionally-oriented “participatory neo-liberalism.” Described here as the “deep marketisation of development” (or simply “deep marketisation”), this process is attracting increasing resources that are formally allocated directly to private actors around states, while also demanding and promoting shifts in state form and function that relate to cultivating “enabling environments” for capital and facilitating “access to finance.” The article begins by conceptualising deep marketisation and placing it in historical and political context. The second section presents examples of deep marketisation in action in the work of the World Bank's private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation, in the Asia-Pacific. The article concludes by highlighting some serious concerns with the deep marketisation agenda.

Decaf empowerment? Post-Washington Consensus development policy, fair trade and Kenya's coffee industry

There has been much debate surrounding the shift in development policy towards the Post-Washington Consensus and its associated Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers. This article seeks to engage critically with and further this literature by considering the concept of empowerment and its role within this consensus through an examination of development policy aimed at farmer empowerment in Kenya. This is investigated with a focus upon coffee producers in the context of Kenya's coffee reforms and the restructuring of the global coffee industry. While acknowledging the limitations of the dominant approach, exacerbated in the African context due to a problematic interpretation of the African state, it is argued that analyses of empowerment should also consider the opportunities for its re-politicisation. Drawing upon Gramscian thought, this article suggests that fair trade initiatives have the potential to offer an alternative approach to farmer empowerment more capable of challenging the concentration of power among roasters and buyers that has taken place within the coffee industry

Inclusive Growth Strategies for Pakistan ─ Myth or Reality for Policymakers!

The mantra of inclusive growth is taking over the public policy debates addressing poverty alleviation and sustained development in the developing world. In order to reduce poverty substantially, rapid pace of growth is not only necessary, but it should be sustainable in the long run and broad-based across sectors, nonetheless, inclusive of country’s labour force at large. Poverty and growth were much discussed and analysed in separation by policymakers in the previous decades. Inclusive growth strategy is an integration of these two strands of analyses implying relationship between the macro and micro determinants of growth. This paper examines the nature of relationship between the macroeconomic and social-development indicators by using a Multiple Regression Framework and Vector Auto Regression Model, as proposed by Toda-Yamamoto, is used to determine the direction of causality between the key macroeconomic variables of Pakistan over the period of 1997-98s to 2009-10. The paper critically examines Inclusive growth paradigm ─ for market led growth, and suggests its weaknesses which can be addressed through review of the pro-poor goals of economic policy of Post Washington Consensus (PWC). Finally, the paper urges to explore the myths and realities of inclusive growth strategies for policymakers in Pakistan to identify and prioritize the Pakistan specific constraints i.e. Low spending on health and education, promote growth in agriculture and rural development for sustained and inclusive growth.

Organizational culture and public sector reforms in a post–Washington consensus era: Lessons from Ghana’s good reformers

Reforming Africa’s public sector has been on the agenda of African governments and their development partners for decades and yet the problem persists. This failure can be attributed to two related factors: solutions to the ‘African public sector problem’ have been dictated by external interests, and the policies have ignored the experiences of organizations within those countries. This article contributes to the search for effective reform policies by making the case for inclusion of the experiences of organizations within each country. Using the concept of organizational culture as a framework, I propose an approach based on the following claims: In every country there are some public organizations that perform relatively well, given their constraints; there is the need to understand why and how there are poor and good performing organizations within the same country; and information from such analysis should form the basis of public sector reform policies. The applicability of the approach is demonstrated with a study of Ghana.

Contemporary Relevance of Nehru

The subject contemporary relevance of Nehru is unfolded into five sections. First section introduces the subject by contextualising Nehru’s ideas in the contemporary scenario. Nehruvian ideological system and its utility in the age of globalisation constitute the body of this article. His nationalism, socialism and world view are located and discussed in the second, third and fourth sections, respectively. Nehru’s idea of composite culture, contested by cultural nationalism from the one end and ethno-nationalism from the other end of spectrum comprises the second section. The third section discusses the conception, consolidation, retreat and revival of Nehruvian model of economic development in the light of Washington Consensus and Post-Washington Consensus. His idea of socialism and the mixed economy are debated in liberal, neoliberal and post-neoliberal scenario. His world view faced rough weather during the second and third phase of India’s foreign policy. The former was set in motion after his death, whereas the latter started taking shape in the Post-Soviet world, which has acquired the hegemonic overtones. Contemporary significance of Nehru’s world view in the hegemonic world is probed in the fourth section. The last section sums up the discussion in the form of concluding observations.

Book Review Symposium

Introduction Debtscapes, Double Agents and Development: Reflections on Poverty Capital It is an honor for me to introduce this series of reflections on Ananya Roy’s important book Poverty Capital: Microfinance and the Making of Development (2010). Her work is an extraordinary inspiration to many geographers, and so it was no surprise that the session about her book at the 2010 meetings of the Association of American Geographers generated a giant audience that spilled out into the corridor. Vicky Lawson, Katherine Rankin, Michael Watts and Stephen Young all provided provocative readings informed by their own diverse ethnographic and intellectual insights into microfinance and millennial development. And to these, Roy responded with more new insights and provocation of her own. The result was a highly energized and engaging encounter which—thanks to the editorial support of Vinay Gidwani—we are now pleased to be able to share with the wider community of Antipode readers. At the conference a number of audience participants remarked on how generative the collective effort at review and criticism had been. Yes, “author meets critics” sessions can degenerate into “author meets sycophants” or “author meets attack dogs” spectacles, but this was neither. Instead, persistent critique—the Spivakian idea that our writings have essential limits that are best made open to the antiessentializing enquiry of others—was enacted with care (and without picky pointscoring about who reads Spivak most correctly). Indeed, this included care about our complicitous double agency as academics, our organic intellectual aspirationscum-cooptations, and our ongoing struggles to think and engage outside of the privileged, albeit besieged and debt-disciplined, box of the university. More substantively, but relatedly, the session further provided reports from the frontlines of development and debt beyond the university. This is a world in which, as Roy argues and as her commentators discuss, academically trained double agents also play an influential role, a world where intellectual debts to Gramsci and Grameen go hand in hand with the financialization of microcredit as microfinance by the world’s biggest banks. And it is a world, therefore, that is better understood and navigated by those who can come to terms with how their own complicities compare with those of other double agents working in capitalist organizations that range from the World Bank to Hezbollah. By recording and amplifying the key notes of the conference conversation the following commentaries provide readers with an opportunity to do some critically comparative self-reflection of their own. Yet by connecting the concern with academic double agency to the double agents of microfinance, the main

The Evolution of and Current Debate in Development Thinking: What Defines Good Development?

When development economics emerged as an independent field in the post-1945 years, the answer to the question what the makings of development are was rather simple: Development equals GNP growth. On following current discussions in politics and business but also in much of academia, one suspects that after nearly six decades of development studies - with rich and varied outputs - we are back to square one: the achievement of economic growth as a development target is omnipresent and any other issue only seems to play a subordinate role.But what does that mean for the lives of the vast majority of the world‘s population who lives in underdeveloped economies? How much do per capita incomes or growth rates really say about the developmental state of a society? Not a whole lot, I argue in this paper. And while the alternative leaves many questions unanswered, I maintain that it is still preferable, as it provides a conceptual framework that can do what an income figure alone cannot. It can tell us whether the people in a developing country feel that their freedom to live the lives they want to live has increased. This paper is undertaking a historic review of growth theory, dependency theories, modernization theory and Washington consensus based development constructs before moving on to the current debate driven by the differences of development views between the post-Washington consensus and the capabilities approach.

Toward normative fragmentation: An East Asian financial architecture in the post-global crisis world

ABSTRACT This article argues for a pluralist, integrative, ‘post-Washington Consensus’ view of an East Asian financial architecture in the post-global crisis world. What are the key architectural problems and how might such problems be resolved? The article aims to address these general questions and to develop a policy-applicable theory about a post-crisis regional financial architecture by focusing on the case of East Asia. The generic problems identified in the study include sovereignty, power struggles, structural diversity, collective action problems and weak regional identity and norms. Herein, I present a conceptual model of logically possible solutions to such problems, which comprises principled minimalism and host regulation, decomposition and issue linkage, and informal intermediaries. The proposed solutions reflect and reinforce the normative fragmentation and decentralization of global financial governance in the twenty-first century.

O GÊNERO DA "NOVA CIDADANIA": O PROGRAMA MULHERES DA PAZ

Resumo: Este artigo discute o novo paradigma de políticas sociais, nomeado de diferentes maneiras, como pós-Consenso de Washington, cidadão-consumidor ou investimento social e as formas que assume no contexto brasileiro. Toma-se como referência empírica o Programa Mulheres da Paz, do Rio de Janeiro, que visa a capacitar mulheres de comunidades pobres a "resgatar" jovens em situação de risco e criminalidade e a atuarem como lideranças locais. O artigo analisa a tensa convivência entre diferentes discursos e práticas que, ao mesmo tempo, mobilizam pressupostos maternalistas, associados à feminilidade e colocados a serviço dos objetivos do desenvolvimento e os novos conceitos de "cidadania ativa", que se baseiam na ideia de investir nos sujeitos como indivíduos e na promoção da autonomia e do autodesenvolvimento, o chamado empoderamento.