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Francisco Panizza, Contemporary Latin America: Development and Democracy Beyond the Washington Consensus (London and New York: Zed Books 2009)
THE TURBULENT history of Latin America since the 1970s has included revolutions, civil wars, military dictatorships, United States invasions, and now the rise of left and center-left elected governments. At the same time there have been fierce policy debates over how the region should progress to overcome enormous problems of poverty and economic underdevelopment, debates which have mostly centred on the contention between neo-liberal and socialist prescriptions. History and policy debates were related since much of the former reflected fights over the latter.
Francisco Panizza, a senior lecturer in politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science of Uruguayan background, has written a nuanced description of the evolution of development policy beginning in the late 1980s, when it seemed like socialist prescriptions were no longer a threat to what he calls the economic orthodoxy.
He begins with the origins of the expression "Washington Consensus." John Williamson coined the term in a 1990 edited book, Latin American Economic Adjustment? How Much has Happened? (Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics). Williamson listed as "the common core of wisdom embraced by all serious economists of the time" a series of policy recommendations, including liberalization of interest rates, trade, and foreign direct investment flows; privatization; and deregulation. These prescriptions were in line with laissez-faire neo-liberalism. Other prescriptions, though, including directing public investment toward social programs, were not. Williamson was agnostic on the question of which model of capitalism - Anglo-Saxon (closest to neo-liberalism), European social market, or Japanese-style - provided the best guidance for developing societies. At the very least, in Panizza's judgment, the main thrust of the Washington Consensus was consistent - if not totally identical with - the main thrust of neo-liberalism.
From the late 1980s to the late 1990s the Washington Consensus achieved clear hegemony among policy makers....