 Whatever Inconsistencies and Effects? Explaining the Resilience of the Policy Reforms Applied to Developing CountriesPost-Print from HAL Abstract: Why is ‘neoliberalism' still a predominant framework within economics and policymaking? The paper considers the mix of theoretical assumptions, causalities and policies known as the ‘Washington consensus', focusing on developing countries. Firstly, it analyses their main elements, resilience and effects (the ‘lost decades in spite of policy reform'). Secondly, it examines the reasons of this resilience and argues that a reason is their adaptive capacity via constant exchanges between facts and conceptual assumptions, because this mix is constituted of heterogeneous elements (from neoclassical theory, ad hoc models or empirics-based policymaking): inconsistency is a core feature and as such its correction is irrelevant. These ‘adaptive inconsistencies' are consolidated by the simultaneous theoretical/policy dimension of the mix. Its cognitive resilience is reinforced by the irrefutability of causations and the cause/effect time lag (‘after current costs, there will be gains', e.g., growth), and is not challenged by the social costs of policies. Keywords: Public policy; international financial institutions; developing countries (search for similar items in EconPapers) Published in Forum for Social Economics, 2015, 44, pp.159-178 There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01644136 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Post-Print from HAL |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.