Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
peoples - and offered alternatives to the conservative paths these two
IFIs had doggedly pursued. Saliently, since their inception in the
mid-1940s, both institutions have retained their conservative, neoclas-
sical economic thought and praxis. Additionally, this ideological dogma-
tism prevails to this day, despite lip-service paid to the humanistic
broadening of the development agenda that appeared as special empha-
ses from time to time (Potter et al., 2008).
The World Bank and Other International Aid Agencies:
'Lords of Poverty'?
The power, prestige and corruption of the 'international aid business'
was comprehensively exposed in a critique authored by an 'institutional
insider and whistleblower', Graham Hancock (1989). His indictment of
the 'Development Set' epitomizes the irony of the situation wherein
these aid professionals' affluence and prosperity relies upon the per-
petuation of global poverty:
Despite the fads, fancies, 'new techniques', 'new directions', and endless
'policy rethinks' that have characterised the development business over
the last half-century, and despite the expenditure of hundreds and bil-
lions of dollars, there is little evidence to prove that the poor of the Third
World have actually
benefitted
. Year in year out, however, there can be
no doubt that aid pays the hefty salaries and underwrites the privileged
lifestyles of the international civil servants, 'development experts', consul-
tants and assorted freeloaders who staff the aid agencies themselves.
(Hancock, 1989: xv)
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The Washington Consensus: Assessed
and Reconsidered
The political apparatus of Washington made up of Congress, the White
House and senior members of the administration, and the technocratic
Washington of the US Federal Reserve Board, economic agencies of the
US government, and the attendant think-tanks and consultancies were
more than coincidental geo-political partners to the World Bank and
IMF in their neoliberal directives. With the US at its heart and the
World Bank and IMF policies in 'lock-step' with the neoliberal agendas
of other global capitalist institutions such as the World Trade
Organization (WTO) and the World Economic Forum (WEF), through-
out the 1990s this hegemonic capitalist group became known and
feared or distrusted as the 'Washington Consensus'. To the world
