Title: Vers un regime de développement néoliberal inclusif: Du 'Consensus de Washington' à un post-consensus.
Abstract: The recent articulation of the Post-Washington Consensus within the most prominent development institutions, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, has been met with two fundamentally opposed responses. One the one hand, critics of the development establishment maintain that the PostWashington Consensus and the policy changes that it involves do not represent a shift away from neoliberal policy practices, while supporters of the international financial institutions (IFIs) argue that the Post-Washington Consensus amounts to a fundamental rupture in development thinking and a progressive move away from policy conditionality towards country ownership and poverty reduction. This paper will present a different interpretation of this recent shift in the development discourse and argues that the bifurcation in the literature has led to a significant impasse in understanding the relevance of this policy shift. The paper will show that the Post-Washington Consensus neither represents a fundamental rupture with the Washington Consensus nor an attempt to reproduce the same neoliberal policy regime. In order to capture this ambiguity, the paper introduces the concept of inclusive neoliberalism and argues that the Post-Washington Consensus is the first step towards the tendential emergence of an inclusive-neoliberal regime of development in the global economy. Moreover, the paper provides a neo-Gramscian reading of this inclusive-neoliberal development regime and suggests that its introduction represents an attempt by the IFIs to resolve some of the legitimacy problems and contradictions that neoliberal policies faced in the periphery. In substantiating the argument, the paper compares and contrasts some of the policy prescriptions of the earlier structural adjustment paradigm with the poverty reduction strategy (PRS) approach, the most visible policy tool of the Post-Washington Consensus. 36 Introduction The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have since the late 1990s been involved in an attempt to redefine their approach to development, moving away in their rhetoric from conditionality and structural adjustment towards poverty reduction and country ownership of development polices. This orientation towards poverty reduction and country ownership is reflected in the launching of the Comprehensive Development Framework (CDF), which is described by the Bank as an attempt to operationalize an holistic approach to development, integrating non-economic aspects into development, and emphasizing the needs and the participation of the poor in the development process (Pender, 2001: 407). As part of this policy shift, the Bank has also engaged in a renewed theoretical discussion about development, eventually leading to the emergence of the PostWashington Consensus (hereafter PWC), a theoretical convergence between (Washington Consensus-based) neoliberal ideas and the new information-theoretic (neo-Keynesian) paradigm developed by Joseph Stiglitz. The articulation of the PWC was moreover accompanied by the introduction of a new policy tool, the Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) approach, which emphasizes country ownership and civil society participation as two of the key principles in development cooperation. According to the Bank and the Fund, these policy changes have resulted in the abandonment of traditional structural adjustment lending and the policy conditionality associated with it, in favour of a development approach that emphasizes partnership and cooperation between the international financial institutions (IFIs), developing country governments and civil society organizations (CSOs). Moreover, in this process the IFIs have repositioned themselves as institutional providers of information and knowledge, while borrowing governments are being asked to take on responsibility, or ‘ownership’, for the development policies they choose to pursue (Stiglitz, 1998b: 21). At the risk of simplification, the recent articulation of the PWC within the Bank and the Fund has been met with two fundamentally opposed responses in academia. On the one hand, critics of the development establishment maintain that the PWC and the policy changes that it involves do not represent a shift away from neoliberal policy practices but have rather tightened the grip of the IFIs over developing countries, foreclosing social and politi-
Publication Year: 2006
Publication Date: 2006-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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