Sometimes the messenger of the content assumes more significance than the content itself. One such instance is that of the Washington Consensus. According to the World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn, "The Washington Consensus has been dead for years. It has been replaced by all sorts of other consensuses. But today we are approaching our discussions with no consensuses." Wolfensohn said this at the opening of a conference on Scaling up Poverty Reduction in Shanghai on 25 May, 2004. More surprising than the content of the message is the messenger. Indeed the Washington Consensus has been the core of many debates and a controversial subject for a few years. So the fact that, once again, it has been condemned is not that surprising. Yet the fact that the President of the World Bank himself declaring the death of the Washington Consensus is much more remarkable. In fact, this is what gives value to this declaration. The implications are twofold: first, it means that he acknowledges that the Washington Consensus did exist, and more, that it is no longer significant. However, there seem to be more insights into this statement and it seems that the current situation is less obvious than James Wolfensohn presumes.
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Sommaire de l'exposé
The reign of the Washington consensus.
The manifestations of the post neo-liberal era.
The principles of the `Post Washington consensus' and its limitations.
Extraits de l'exposé
[...] They are now considered as the major implementers of the Washington Consensus and of its neo- liberal policies. The neo-liberal measures applied by the IMF and the World Bank were primarily a response to the debt crisis. Actually, the oil crises in 1973 and 1979, which triggered a severe recession in the North, also precipitated the ?debt crisis' in the developing world. After Mexico, soon followed by other countries, announced in 1982 that it could no longer service its official debt, Northern creditors feared that, if rapid counter- measures were not taken, there could be a ?domino effect' among developing countries, one that could undermine the whole financial system. [...]
[...] The international community is keen to reform the business of delivering foreign aid, tries to redefine targets in order to enhance efficiency of aid and claims its continuous internal evaluation. However, one must admit that, in actuality, few things have changed and we are still the spectators of the domination exercised by the liberal elites of the North. Finally, one of the majors reasons why the Post Washington Consensus is not fully attained is because no clear alternative theory has emerged. [...]
[...] Are we facing a post Washington Consensus area? Or are we still under the neo-liberal domination? What evidence could make us understand the current state of the development policies? To what extent is the Washington Consensus dead? In order to better understand this controversy, I will first describe the origins and the principles of the Washington Consensus. Next, I will present the evidence that demonstrates the disbanding of this way of thinking and what could possibly be the new paradigm in terms of development policies. [...]
[...] Increasingly outspoken, he eventually was ousted from his World Bank post. Since leaving the bank, Stiglitz has sharpened his criticism further, making embarrassing revelations about the role of the IMF in the Russian loan scandal, among other things, in his most famous book Globalization and its Discontents.[4] While this book includes no simple formula on how to make globalization work, Stiglitz provides a reform agenda that has provoked debate within the international community as well as a huge controversy and even anger among the agencies of the Washington Consensus. [...]
[...] Moreover, the completion of Washington Consensus strategies often produces problems of crony capitalism. The general idea behind this phenomenon is that unregulated markets are not necessarily competitive to the extent that neo-liberal reforms can lead to free and unregulated monopolies, instead of promoting free markets. In that case, far from improving competitiveness and efficiency as expected, these policies have created the basis of crony capitalism. Additionally, the phenomenon of a ?collapsed state', for example Haiti, or Sierra Leone, is an example of the necessity of building the state and not shrinking it as neo-liberalists recommend. [...]
Économie, administration & politique