The rise and fall of the Washington consensus as a paradigm for developing countries

Summary. — The introduction of the Washington Consensus involved not simply a swing from state-led to market-oriented policies, but also a shift in the ways in which development problems were framed and in the types of explanation through which policies were justified. Key changes were the partial globalization of development policy analysis, and a shift from historicism to ahistorical performance assessment. The main challenge to this approach is a latent Southern Consensus, which is apparent in the convergence between East Asian developmentalism and Latin American neostructuralism. The demise of the Washington Consensus is inevitable because it