IMF restructuring that cripples rights is framed as development, not violation

Evidence

This account, which I have taken from Joseph Stiglitz (until recently vice-president and chief economist of the World Bank) can be replicated even more dramatically for Russia. In both cases, the ability of the affected states to uphold certain rights was directly compromised by IMF and U.S. policies aimed at liberalizing national economies throughout the world. But these interventions themselves cannot be regarded as instances of human rights violation; they are presented as the promotion of economic restructuring necessary for development. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 621

Categorization

• XREF: Stiglitz account corroborates the decentralization point relevant to reading state power generally; connects to how economic norms operate as a coercive ‘secular’ logic beyond moral-legal reach.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: what specific mechanism lets catastrophic economic harm be reframed as neutral ‘development’ rather than violence? Asad points at it here but does not fully unpack it.