The IMF blamed implementation failures rather than reforming its Washington Consensus policies

Evidence

Given all this, you might think that the limited success of “austerity in the Global South” would encourage a rethink of these policies. In one quarter, it did. The IMF’s sister institution the World Bank produced a report in 2005 that pretty much acknowledged the near total failure of the Washington Consensus checklist of reforms. But the IMF, echoing the classical liberal tradition, produced an evaluation the same year that argued the opposite. Indeed, according to the IMF report, the only thing that failed was, as ever, countries’ implementation of the reforms, which left the content of the reforms both unquestioned and untouched. — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 444

Categorization

• XREF: Links to Mattei’s account of how austerity proponents blame implementation rather than theory when policies fail. — connects to: The Washington Consensus misrepresented actual practice of OECD states. — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 435; Neoliberal doctrine must be distinguished from failures in its state implementation — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 1778; The Washington Consensus caricatures neoliberalism as a fixed policy recipe — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 160 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Neoliberal doctrine must be distinguished from failures in its state implementation #contradicts (0.85) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 1778
• The Washington Consensus caricatures neoliberalism as a fixed policy recipe #contradicts (0.75) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 160