Abstract
The ideas behind the “Washington Consensus” originated in the late 1970s at about the time that many developing countries began to ask policymakers in Washington for help in dealing with the effects of prolonged import substitution strategies: decreasing exports, crippling debt, runaway inflation, and bloated public sectors. By the mid-1980s, the policy prescriptions jelled, and in 1990 John Williamson identified a set of ten policies that “Washington” regarded as desirable. He coined the term “Washington Consensus” in a paper featured in a book of collected works on the economic situation of Latin America called Latin American Adjustment. By “Washington,” Williamson was referring to “the political Washington of Congress and senior members of the administration and the technocratic Washington of the international financial institutions, the economic agencies of the US government, the Federal Reserve Board, and the think tanks.” Thus, for Williamson, the term Washington Consensus was first and foremost a descriptive term. Like it or not, there was an implicit consensus in official Washington, and he had identified it and given it a name.
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Notes
- 1.
John Williamson, “What Washington Means by Policy Reform,” in Latin American Adjustment: How Much Has Happened? ed. John Williamson (Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics, 1990), 7.
- 2.
John Williamson, “In Search of a Manual for Technopols,” in The Political Economy of Policy Reform, ed. John Williamson (Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics, 1994), 10.
- 3.
Ibid., 22–23.
- 4.
Williamson, “What Washington Means by Policy Reform,” 10.
- 5.
Ibid., 14.
- 6.
World Bank, World Development Report 1987: Barriers to Adjustment and Growth in the World Economy; Industrialization and Foreign Trade; World Development Indicators, 8.
- 7.
Ibid., 82.
- 8.
Williamson, “In Search of a Manual for Technopols,” 27.
- 9.
World Bank, World Development Report 1987: Barriers to Adjustment and Growth in the World Economy; Industrialization and Foreign Trade; World Development Indicators.
- 10.
Francis Cherunilam, International Economics, 5th ed. (New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill, 2008), 227.
- 11.
Williamson, “What Washington Means by Policy Reform,” 18.
- 12.
Ibid., 19–20.
- 13.
Richard Feinberg, “Comment,” in Latin American Adjustment: How Much Has Happened?, ed. John Williamson (Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics, 1990), 24. At the time of his comment, Feinberg was the Executive Vice President and Director of Studies at the Overseas Development Council.
- 14.
Stanley Fischer, “Comment,” in Latin American Adjustment: How Much Has Happened?, ed. John Williamson (Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics, 1990), 27–28. At the time of his comment, Fischer was a professor at MIT and Vice President of Development Economics and Chief Economist at the World Bank. He later became Deputy Director of the IMF.
- 15.
Joseph Stiglitz, “More Instruments and Broader Goals: Moving Toward the Post-Washington Consensus” (The 1998 WIDER Annual Lecture, Helsinki, Finland, January 7, 1998).
- 16.
Williamson, “In Search of a Manual for Technopols,” 20–21.
- 17.
Fischer, “Comment,” 28.
- 18.
Dani Rodrik, “Feasible Globalizations” (Harvard University, July 2002), 8–9, http://www.hks.harvard.edu/fs/drodrik/Feasglob.pdf.
- 19.
See, for example, Hall and Soskice, Varieties of Capitalism.
- 20.
“Inequality in America,” The Economist, June 15, 2006.
- 21.
Ibid.
- 22.
“Capitalism and Democracy,” The Economist, June 28, 2003.
- 23.
Ibid.
- 24.
Stiglitz, “More Instruments and Broader Goals.”
References
Williamson, John. “What Washington Means by Policy Reform.” In Latin American Adjustment: How Much Has Happened? edited by John Williamson. Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics, 1990.
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© 2012 Bruce R. Scott
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Scott, B.R. (2012). The Washington Consensus. In: Capitalism. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-1879-5_11
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