The Neoliberal Myth in Latin America: The Cases of Mexico and Argentina in the ‘90s

During the ‘90s most Latin American countries were submitted to neoliberal structural reform policies. Neoliberal policies imposed market supremacy, reduced the State’s role in the economy and deregulated the markets. This paper aims at describing how these policies affected the most important macroeconomic indexes, with special emphasis on Argentina and Mexico, the two countries that suffered most from the economic crises of the ‘80s and ‘90s, and where the neoliberal policies were applied with greater orthodoxy. In spite of a slight improvement in some macroeconomic indexes, in Latin America neoliberalism failed to reduce poverty and unemployment, and was unable to guarantee a fair distribution of the wealth and improve welfare.Latin America, Mexico, Argentina, ’90s, Neoliberalism

The Joint Vienna Institute

"How does the intellectual role played by international training organisations fit into the contemporary architecture of global governance? The international diffusion of economic policy ideas represents one of the core dimensions of contemporary global governance, which has generated heated controversy in recent years with international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank castigated for championing a ‘one-size-fits-all’ brand of neoliberal economic reform. Yet while substantial scholarly attention has focused on analysing the effects of the formal compliance mechanisms that the IMF and the World Bank rely on to implement neoliberal policy changes in borrowing countries, such as loan conditionality, less attention has been devoted to exploring the intermediate avenues through which neoliberal ideas travel from global governance institutions to national governance contexts. This article aims to address this gap in the study of contemporary global governance and neoliberal policy diffusion through critically examining the evolving role of the Joint Vienna Institute (JVI), an international training organisation set up after the end of the Cold War to transmit global ‘best practice’ economic policy ideas to national officials in post-communist economies.

"Low-Income Students of Color in the U.S. Neoliberal Public Education System: An Examination of Federal and State Intervention Policies”

In this thesis I will use a critical policy analysis approach to examine US education reform and its effects on social inequality. I situate my analysis within the rise of neoliberal ideology which prioritizes market-driven values, champions individualism, diminishes social responsibility, and promotes deregulation. I seek to answer research questions such as: how does the United States’ neoliberal agenda create, maintain, and reproduce the marginalization of low-income students of color? How is the neoliberal agenda embedded in US education policy and law at state and federal levels? And, how might students of color conceptualize themselves within the larger framework of neoliberalism? As evidence I draw on theory, policy analysis, and existing empirical data on one of the most underperforming public schools in San Diego, California, with most of the students being minorities and low-income: Abraham Lincoln High School

The Limits of Minsky’s Financial Instability Hypothesis as an Explanation of the Crisis

The financial crisis has been widely interpreted as a Minsky crisis. This paper argues that interpretation is misleading. The processes identified in Minsky's financial instability hypothesis played a critical role in the crisis, but that role was part of a larger economic drama involving the neoliberal growth model. The neoliberal model inaugurated an era of wage stagnation. In place of wage growth spurring demand growth, it relied on borrowing and asset price inflation. That arrangement was always unsustainable but financial innovation and deregulation warded off the model's stagnationist tendencies far longer than expected. These delay mechanisms is where Minsky's financial instability hypothesis enters the narrative. The interpretation of the financial crisis and Great Recession has enormous significance for economic policy. If interpreted as a purely financial crisis, in the spirit of a pure Minsky crisis, the policy implication is simply to fix the financial system. However, there is no need for reform of the real economy because that is not the source of the problem. If instead, the crisis is interpreted through a new Marxist - Structural Keynesian lens the policy implications are deeper and more challenging. Financial sector reform remains needed to deal with the problems of destabilizing speculation and political capture. However, it does not address the root problem which is the neo-liberal growth model. Restoring stable shared prosperity requires replacing the neoliberal model with a new model that restores the link between wage and productivity growth. That will require adoption of a new labor market agenda, re-fashioning globalization, reversing the imbalance between market and government, and restoring the goal of full employment. Financial sector reform without reform of the neoliberal growth model will leave the economy stuck in an era of stagnation. That is because stagnation is the logical next step of the neoliberal model given current conditions. Ironically, financial sector reform alone may worsen stagnation since financial excess was a major driver of the neoliberal model and that driver would be removed.

The Limits of Minsky's Financial Instability Hypothesis as an Explanation of the Crisis

The financial crisis has been widely interpreted as a Minsky crisis. This paper argues that interpretation is misleading. The processes identified in Minsky's financial instability hypothesis played a critical role in the crisis, but that role was part of a larger economic drama involving the neoliberal growth model. The neoliberal model inaugurated an era of wage stagnation. In place of wage growth spurring demand growth, it relied on borrowing and asset price inflation. That arrangement was always unsustainable but financial innovation and deregulation warded off the model's stagnationist tendencies far longer than expected. These delay mechanisms is where Minsky's financial instability hypothesis enters the narrative. The interpretation of the financial crisis and Great Recession has enormous significance for economic policy. If interpreted as a purely financial crisis, in the spirit of a pure Minsky crisis, the policy implication is simply to fix the financial system. However, there is no need for reform of the real economy because that is not the source of the problem. If instead, the crisis is interpreted through a new Marxist - Structural Keynesian lens the policy implications are deeper and more challenging. Financial sector reform remains needed to deal with the problems of destabilizing speculation and political capture. However, it does not address the root problem which is the neo-liberal growth model. Restoring stable shared prosperity requires replacing the neoliberal model with a new model that restores the link between wage and productivity growth. That will require adoption of a new labor market agenda, re-fashioning globalization, reversing the imbalance between market and government, and restoring the goal of full employment. Financial sector reform without reform of the neoliberal growth model will leave the economy stuck in an era of stagnation. That is because stagnation is the logical next step of the neoliberal model given current conditions. Ironically, financial sector reform alone may worsen stagnation since financial excess was a major driver of the neoliberal model and that driver would be removed

Reforming women in the United States and Aotearoa/New Zealand: A comparative ethnography of welfare reform in global context

Historically, the United States and Aotearoa/New Zealand symbolize opposite poles of an individualist-collectivist welfare state continuum. Until recently, Aotearoa/New Zealand was known as a "cradle-to-grave" welfare state, with "universal" employment and coverage in health and education. U.S. history, in contrast, is marked by an unabashed individualism and a residualist approach to welfare. Recent neoliberal reforms, however, have engendered a convergence between the two countries in the conceptualization and organization of assistance for poor single mothers. Most notable are the "workfare" provisions of legislative changes made in 1996 in the two countries, which work to reconstitute poor mothers as potential able-bodied workers. In this article we analyze welfare reform in the United States and Aotearoa/New Zealand, with particular reference to how poor single mothers respond to, comply and cope with, or resist neoliberal strategies. Analysis is based on participant-observation, interviews, and focus groups conducted between 1989 and 1999

The Third Moment in Law and Development Theory and the Emergence of a New Critical Practice

The study of the relationship between law and economic development goes back at least to the nineteenth century. It is a question that attracted the attention of classical thinkers like Marx and Weber. And there were some early efforts to craft policy in this area; for example, under the Raj, some English Utilitarians tried to put Jeremy Bentham’s ideas about law and economic progress into practice in India. But it was only after World War II that systematic and organized efforts to reform legal systems became part of the practice of international development agencies. Initially, development agencies turned to law as an instrument for state policy aimed at generating economic growth. Starting in the 1980s, interest in the role of law in economic development grew, but it was an interest in law more as a framework for market activity than as an instrument of state power. This book argues that, starting in the mid-1990s, development practitioners approached law in a fundamentally new way – as a correction for market failures and as a constitutive part of “development” itself. As a result, “the rule of law” has become significant not only as a tool of development policy, but as an objective for development policy in its own right. This book charts the history of this growing interest in the legal field, explores the shifting rationales behind development policy initiatives, and explores in detail the newest – and most surprising – of these rationales. To do that, we trace the history of a body of ideas about law and economic development that have been employed not just by academics but also by development practitioners responsible for allocating funds and designing projects. In this introduction, we refer to that body of ideas as law and development doctrine. Although this doctrine has academic roots in economic and legal theory, it is a practical working tool of development agencies

Citizenship and land in South Africa: from rights to responsibilities

The anthropological study of citizenship enables an understanding of restitutive and redistributive reforms in the post-transitional context of South Africa. In its earlier, state-derived form, citizenship’s situated and contingent character, its use of pre-existing modes of identification as templates, and its ethnic differentiation which expresses ‘class’ distinctions while also masking them, reveal that no single democratic vision can easily encompass all of those who would belong in a new society. In its later market-oriented form, citizenship becomes more individuated, with discourses stressing enterprise, responsibility and the need to earn rights. The term ‘neoliberal governmentality’ has been used to describe the switch from state- to market-driven arrangements, but is inadequate to do so since it overlooks the extent to which state and market intermesh and are tightly interwoven, with apparently purely market-oriented initiatives reliant on extensive state intervention both for design and implementation. In societies undergoing rapid transition, even though new policies and social forces have come into play and people have responded to these in new ways, this novelty is mitigated and mediated through older social forms, attitudes and approaches, which have left their imprint upon both formal institutions and on the expectations and responses of those who ‘receive’ those institutions’ interventions. The paper calls for a view of citizenship which merges elements – state and market – that might at first sight seem contradictory: and which both acknowledges the power of wider frameworks and recognises the ability of ordinary actors on the ground to respond to and sometimes resist these

New New Deals: Reforming Welfare Again?

In both the Unites States and the United Kingdom, the idea of the New Deal has proved a potent political symbol during this crisis. In what follows, I explore some of the ways in which the imagery of the New Deal has been deployed and consider some of the historical questions that are generated by this imagery. What does the image of the New Deal evoke, and to what does it lay claim? Three aspects of current political discourse seem to me to be of particular interest: the return of publicness; the problematization of capitalism; and the revival of the New Deal as a progressive imaginary. They are, of course, interlinked, not least in their attempt to define this as an epochal moment while struggling to “save the system” from itself