Abstract

GOMEZ MONTOYA, Juan Francisco. The IMF, state reduction and Washington consensus. Are they really one same thing?. Pap.polit. [online]. 2015, vol.20, n.1, pp.181-209. ISSN 0122-4409.  https://doi.org/10.11144/Javeriana.papo20-1.fmir.

American Sociologist Joseph Kahl (1988) used to say that in Latin America, scholars and researchers of sociology were seduced by the revolutionary spirit of the students and started using wide theories which allowed them to understand the reasons for Latin America's backwards progress instead of studying accessible cases in detail to reach a wider reality. From this (now old) tradition, two trends (Bryant, 2003) have taken place which seem to have a wide acceptance at a regional level: the trend of defending free trade as if it were some sort of unquestionable truth and the trend of attacking it as if it were some sort of illness we have to live with. This has become notorious at the academic level. Even certain authors of both academic trends (Mendoza, 2012; Trentmann, 1998) have taken advantage of the inherent conceptual scarcity of these speeches in political economy in order to reinforce their ideological arguments. Consequently, the speech that aims to attack free market by any means possible, has led scholars and politicians to group within some sort of theoretical bag concepts such as state reduction, the neoliberal philosophy and institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank, under the assumption that they are all in complete agreement and work harmoniously. This kind of thinking is supported by the concept of internal colonization by Mexican sociologist Pablo Gonzalez Casanova (Kahl, 1988). This enormous and unintelligible conceptual potpourri is commonly known by the name of Washington Consensus. However, a careful analysis of the each element which supposedly comprises the Washington Consensus will easily show that there are some of these elements which have a very weak conceptual relation amongst them and some others are plain contradictory. This article intended to give some clarity on this issue through the historical and theoretical review of three concepts which have been widely controversial within Latin America. With such purpose, this work will first state some conceptual thoughts. Then the history of the IMF will be shortly narrated, then I will proceed to talk about the concept of state reduction and the neoliberal philosophy in overall -through the thoughts of its greatest advocate, Milton Friedman- and its original idea about non intervention. Then the history of the Washington Consensus will be mentioned and all three elements will be compared through a comparative chart. Finally, some conclusions will be stated.

Keywords : Washington consensus; IMF; liberalism; political economy.

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