Uncertainty in Policy Making: Values and Evidence in Complex Decisions by Michael Heazle

Author:Michael Heazle [Heazle, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781136530326
Google: qz1GH1hBouwC
Goodreads: 16649740
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2010-09-17T00:00:00+00:00

Worldviews, ideology and the power of perceptions

As earlier noted, Williamson presented his notion of a Washington Consensus on the eve of one of the most significant events of the last century: the ending of the Cold War and the bipolar structure it created within the international system. The US, for the first time in its history, was suddenly (and unexpectedly) in a position where its power and international influence were mostly unchallenged. The foreign policy rhetoric from both the George H. W. Bush and later the Clinton administrations, and even George W. Bush when he first took office, appeared to confirm a strong US commitment to maintaining a multilateral international environment, based on international law and cooperation through multilateral institutions such as the United Nations (UN). For a short while at least, it seemed that the ultimate liberal dream of transplanting the key ingredients of domestic society – civil and legal order and civil rights, shared values and institutional arrangements – into the international realm was close enough to no longer qualify as an idealist fantasy. High on the list of features that the ‘new world order’ would include were a strong commitment to liberal democracy, human rights and, of course, the major tenets of neo-liberal economic thinking: free trade, deregulation, privatization and free markets.

It is not surprising then that the ‘Washington Consensus’ that Williamson recognized in 1989 was warmly received and generally agreed upon within most developed governments at the time (Japan remained largely unaffected by the neo-liberal bug until Junichiro Koizumi became Prime Minister in 2001),32 since major economies like the US and UK had already been practising neo-liberal fundamentals for almost a decade while less influential economies, such as Australia's and New Zealand's, followed suit. For Williamson, however, the problem is that he never subscribed to any form of neo-liberal agenda and certainly never intended his Washington Consensus list to contribute to one. He maintains that the policy prescriptions he listed were simply empirically sound economic principles that most economists could agree upon in the context of creating and maintaining economic development.33 Williamson's basic argument seems to be that had the Washington Consensus principles been implemented differently, which he has indicated to mean a more balanced and case specific approach, the development outcomes of at least the last 20 years could have been different.

But given that Williamson's ‘laundry list’ of policy prescriptions stopped short of providing any detail or guidance on exactly how the Washington Consensus should be implemented and, importantly, under what circumstances (hence the ‘one-size fits all’ approach adopted by the World Bank and IMF discussed by Stiglitz),34 his protestations over it being wrongly labelled as ‘neo-liberal’ are unreasonable. Indeed, since it was the prevailing neo-liberal political climate surrounding the major economies at the time that provided acceptance of his consensus in the first instance, it is hardly surprising that the same neo-liberal thinking should interpret and implement the Washington principles in ways that were consistent with that mindset. Contrary to what Williamson appears to

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