Neoliberals repurposed international institutions to lock in prior policy wins

Evidence

Neoliberals begin with a presumption that capital has a natural right to flow freely across national boundaries. (The free flow of labor enjoys no similar right.97) Since that entails persistent balance-of-payments problems in a nonautarkic world, neoliberals took the lead in inventing all manner of transnational devices for the economic and political discipline of nation-states. They began by attempting to reintroduce what they considered to be pure market discipline (flexible exchange rates, dismantling capital controls) during the destruction of the Bretton Woods system, but over the longer term learned to appreciate that suitably staffed international institutions such as the WTO, the World Bank, the IMF, and other units are better situated to impose neoliberal policies upon recalcitrant nation-states. Initially strident demands to abolish global financial (and other) institutions on the part of early neoliberals such as Friedman and some denizens of the Cato Institute were subsequently tempered by others—such as Anne Krueger, Stanley Fischer, and Kenneth Rogoff—and as these neoliberals came to occupy these institutions, they used them primarily to influence staffing and policy decisions, and thus to displace other internationalist agendas. The role of such transnational organizations was recast to exert “lock-in” of prior neoliberal policies, and therefore to restrict the range of political options of national governments. Sometimes they were also used to displace indigenous “crony capitalists” with a more cosmopolitan breed of cronyism. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 170

Categorization

• XREF: Directly serves the reading goal: this is a core mechanism of how the neoliberal ‘thought collective’ institutionalized itself — links naming Krueger, Fischer, Rogoff to the Washington Consensus. — connects to: Neoliberals captured global financial institutions to discipline nation-states — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 2131; Neoliberals wanted an international order forcing anti-inflationary policy onto states — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 425
• SEED: The ‘crony displacement’ point — international institutions replacing indigenous crony capitalists with a cosmopolitan breed — is a sharp angle for an essay on how ‘anti-corruption’ reform functions as market capture.

Broader Connections

• Neoliberals captured global financial institutions to discipline nation-states #corroborates (0.85) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2131
• Neoliberals wanted an international order forcing anti-inflationary policy onto states #expands (0.82) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 425