Third World debt crisis enabled 1980s liberalization, not just neoliberal advocacy.

Evidence

My focus on MPS-connected actors does not imply a causal argument that organized neoliberals are responsible for the defeat of the G-77’s agenda at the United Nations, nor do I want to suggest that their efforts explain why policymakers in the global South turned toward the Washington Consensus when they did. An adequate explanation for the wave of economic liberalization that broke over the developing world from Mexico to Morocco during the 1980s must acknowledge the extent to which these reforms were enabled by events in the international political economy, and especially a profoundly destabilizing Third World debt crisis, as Dani Rodrik (1994) has persuasively argued. However, by looking at the arguments and activities of individuals and institutions engaged in the debates of the period, we can add to this conventional, macro-level analysis another layer of understanding, one that is enabled by examining how and where the ideas and positions that orient much of today’s development discourse were formulated and fostered, both before and after the relatively brief period of the G-77’s campaign for reform. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1753

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Latin American developmental economics fell on the 1980s debt crisis. — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 434; Latin America’s debt crisis opened a window for neoliberal network expansion — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 551; The 1980s debt crisis fueled the Washington Consensus’ rejection of import substitution — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1732 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• The Third World debt crisis secured neoliberalism’s victory in development discourse #corroborates (0.92) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1816
• The 1980s debt crisis triggered IMF demands for CFA devaluation #expands (0.78) — Fanny Pigeaud_ Ndongo Samba Sylla, Africa’s Last Colonial Currency, 205