Structural adjustment programs exported expansionary austerity to the developing world with poor results

Evidence

As Dani Rodrik notes, IMF policy in this period, aided and abetted by the World Bank, devolved to a mantra of “stabilize, privative, and liberalize” as “codified in John Williamson’s well-known Washington Consensus.” The result was a series of one-size-fits-all policies that were applied from Azerbaijan to Zambia whose objective was to “minimize fiscal deficits, minimize inflation, minimize tariffs, maximize privatization, maximize liberalization of finance.” It was, in other words, “expansionary fiscal austerity” in a developmental form, and the results were, by and large, terrible. — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 439

Categorization

• XREF: Directly connects to the reader’s stated purpose of understanding austerity’s precursors; the ‘expansionary fiscal austerity’ framing is the core claim central to Mattei and the broader literature on austerity’s global export. — connects to: Austerity was imposed on the developing world well before the current crisis — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 273; Latin American developmental economics fell on the 1980s debt crisis. — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 434; Structural adjustment policies shrank the economies that pursued them — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 440 (+5 more)
• DEFINE: Defines the Washington Consensus checklist as stabilize, privatize, and liberalize—five minimization/maximization targets.

Broader Connections

• Structural adjustment policies shrank the economies that pursued them #corroborates (0.90) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 440
• Austerity since colonial times has devastated the global periphery #expands (0.85) — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 288
• Applied development economics theory produced disastrous results across Latin America #qualifies (0.72)