The Washington Consensus as transnational policy paradigm: Its origins, trajectory and likely successor

Sarah Babb

Review of International Political Economy, 2013, vol. 20, issue 2, 268-297

Abstract: This paper explores the origins and trajectory of the Washington Consensus - the ideas associated with the developing countries' move to free markets in the 1980s and 1990s. I argue that the Consensus was a transnational policy paradigm, shaped by both scholarly and political forces (Hall, 1993). At the core of the Consensus was the international financial institutions' practice of conditionality - making loans to governments in exchange for policy reforms. The Consensus was subsequently weakened by its own unintended consequences, by political forces both within Washington and worldwide and by intellectual changes in the field of economics. However, I argue that the Consensus has yet to encounter any serious rivals.

Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/09692290.2011.640435 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rripxx:v:20:y:2013:i:2:p:268-297

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rrip20

DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2011.640435

Access Statistics for this article

Review of International Political Economy is currently edited by Gregory Chin, Juliet Johnson, Daniel Mügge, Kevin Gallagher, Ilene Grabel and Cornelia Woll

More articles in Review of International Political Economy from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().