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World Bank And Imf : Structural Adjustment Policies

Satisfactory Essays

Question 3: World Bank and IMF Structural adjustment policies, austerity, and foreign debt have affected social development in the global South in various ways, which will be outlined in this essay. Additionally, it will cover why Europe is using austerity measures today, and the effect it is having for that region. Finally, this essay will address the World Bank and IMF, and suggest how they should deal with nations in debt in the future. In order to talk about structural adjustment plans and austerity measures, we must first go back and look at neoliberalism. The policies and backbone of SAP 's and austerity come from neoliberal policies. Johanna Bockman writes in Neolibralism that these policies, " would preserve laissez-faire markets while adding a role for what they considered a minimal state" (Bockman 2013, p. 1). Laissez-faire means free trade and free markets, with very little interference from the government. In addition, privatization replaces government run industries, and in order to facilitate development in a country, government control is taken away. Naomi Klein explains in The Shock Doctrine that these policies started with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Thatcherism came out of Pinochet 's Chile, and included privatization and labor union reform, quickly followed by Reagon 's trickledown economics (Klein 2007, p. 163, p. 168-169). David Harvey mirrors these thoughts in, A Brief History of Neolibralism, explaining that neoliberalism started

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