Elsevier

Geoforum

Volume 41, Issue 2, March 2010, Pages 185-194
Geoforum

Quo vadis neoliberalism? The remaking of global capitalist governance after the Washington Consensus

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2009.09.009Get rights and content

Abstract

The Washington Consensus, through which neoliberal global capitalist governance gained hegemony over the third world, entered a crisis in the late 1990s. Triggered by the 1997 Asian financial crisis, and by contestations of neoliberal governance from global civil society, two remakings of global capitalist governance can be identified: A ‘post-Washington consensus’ whose relation to neoliberalism is complex; and a ‘new development economics’ that advocates Keynesian principles. Irrespective of the trajectory of this emergent phase of re-regulation, particularly after the 2008 global finance crisis, these remakings can be conceptualized as supplements reinforcing an imaginary of capitalism as the solution to, rather than progenitor of, uneven development. Through discourses of capitalist development as a sequential trajectory to be followed by all countries, as flattening the world to enable catch-up by backward countries, and as incorporating socio-spatial difference via its commodification, this socio-spatial imaginary functions to legitimate expertise located in the first world, and global capitalist governance, irrespective of serial policy failures.

Section snippets

From Washington to post-Washington consensus

In 1990, John Williamson coined the term Washington Consensus (originally directed at Latin America: Williamson, 1990, p. 7), identifying “10 policy measures about whose proper deployment Washington can muster a reasonable degree of consensus”.

Beyond post-Washington? The ‘new’ development economics

Many uncertainties remain about the coherence and nature of a post-Washington ‘consensus’, notwithstanding widespread circulation of the term. Whereas the Washington Consensus dominated for some 15 years, the post-Washington ‘consensus’ has not settled in the same way and is already under challenge—by those very thinkers whose ideas were drawn on to justify it. Such a further shift cannot be traced to a specific moment of crisis and contestation paralleling the events of the late 1990s—although

Continuities: the developmentalist socio-spatial imaginary

We have shown that there have been marked periodic remakings of global capitalist governance from a Washington to a post-Washington consensus, and beyond, in ways that have begun to question some key aspects of global neoliberal governance. Taken together, they hardly represent a consensus. Yet such shifts and disagreements have been contained within a developmentalist socio-spatial imaginary that has, in effect, repeatedly legitimized discourses of first world expertise even as the policies

Conclusion

We have argued that the shifting global governance discourses directed toward the third world since the 1970s can be conceptualized as capitalism’s supplements. As supplements, they have reaffirmed a persistent developmentalist socio-spatial imaginary. Recent discussions of such shifts (e.g., Evans, 2008, Wade, 2008) invoke Karl Polanyi’s double movement: struggles within nation-states of North Atlantic capitalism, dating back to the 18th century, between those propagating free markets and

Acknowledgement

We thank Sam Schueth, Marion Werner and Jun Zhang, seminar participants at the National University of Singapore, and two anonymous reviewers, for comments that have helped us clarify and qualify our arguments.

References (84)

  • B. Fine

    Economics imperialism and the new development economics as Kuhnian paradigm shift?

    World Development

    (2002)
  • M.T. Berger et al.

    Lineages of liberalism and miracles of modernisation: The World Bank, the East Asian trajectory and the international development debate

    Third World Quarterly

    (1998)
  • S. Bergeron

    The post-Washington consensus and the economic representations of women in development at the World Bank

    International Feminist Journal of Politics

    (2003)
  • J. Blaut

    The Colonizer’s Model of the World

    (1993)
  • U. Brand et al.

    Postneoliberalism: catch-all word or valuable analytical and political concept? – Aims of a beginning debate

    Development Dialogue

    (2009)
  • N. Brenner

    New State Spaces: Urban Governance and the Rescaling of Statehood

    (2004)
  • H.-J. Chang

    Kicking away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective

    (2002)
  • H.-J. Chang

    Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism

    (2008)
  • J. Christensen

    Dirty money: Inside the secret world of offshore banking

  • P. Collier

    The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What can be Done about it

    (2007)
  • Commission on Growth and Development

    The Growth Report: Strategies for Sustained Growth and Inclusive Development

    (2008)
  • D. Craig et al.

    Development beyond Neoliberalism? Governance, Poverty Reduction and Political Economy

    (2006)
  • H. de Soto

    The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else

    (2000)
  • J. Derrida

    Of Grammatology

    (1976)
  • A.C. Drainville

    Beyond altermondialisme: Anti-capitalist dialectic of presence

    Review of International Political Economy

    (2005)
  • W. Easterly

    The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’ Misadventures in the Tropics

    (2002)
  • W. Easterly

    The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done More Harm than Good

    (2006)
  • P. Evans

    Is an alternative globalization possible?

    Politics and Society

    (2008)
  • B. Fine

    Neither the Washington nor the post-Washington consensus: An introduction

  • N. Fraser

    Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the ‘Post-Socialist’ Condition

    (1997)
  • C.J. Friedrich

    The political thought of neo-liberalism

    American Political Science Review

    (1955)
  • J.K. Gibson-Graham

    A Postcapitalist Politics

    (2006)
  • J. Glassman

    From Seattle (and Ubon) to Bangkok: the scales of resistance to corporate globalization

    Environment and Planning D: Society and Space

    (2001)
  • M. Hardt et al.

    Empire

    (2000)
  • M. Hardt et al.

    Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

    (2004)
  • D. Harvey

    A Brief History of Neoliberalism

    (2006)
  • R. Hausmann

    Prisoners of Geography

    Foreign Policy

    (2001)
  • Y. Hayami

    From the Washington consensus to the post-Washington consensus: Retrospect and prospect

    Asian Development Review

    (2003)
  • International Monetary Fund, 2008. Overview: Transforming the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility (ESAF) and the...
  • K. Jayasuriya

    Globalization, sovereignty, and the rule of law: From political to economic constitutionalism?

    Constellations

    (2001)
  • K. Jayasuriya

    Statecraft, Welfare and the Politics of Inclusion

    (2006)
  • K. Jayasuriya et al.

    Economic orthodoxy and the East Asian crisis

    Third World Quarterly

    (2001)
  • R. Kanbar

    The co-evolution of the Washington Consensus and the economic development discourse

    (2008)
  • G.M. Keynes

    The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money

    (1936)
  • H. Leitner et al.

    Squaring up to neoliberalism

  • H. Leitner et al.

    Contesting urban futures: Decentering neoliberalism

  • U.S. Mehta

    Liberalism and Empire

    (1999)
  • H.C. Montiel

    Incompleteness of the post-Washington consensus: A critique of macro-economic and institutional reforms

    International Studies

    (2007)
  • D. Narayan et al.

    Voices of the Poor: Crying out for Change

    (2000)
  • D. Narayan et al.

    Voices of the Poor: Can Anyone Hear us?

    (2000)

    • Cited by (0)

    View full text
    Copyright © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.