What Washington Consensus?
The impression that the Washington Consensus was, in fact, a set of rigid, almost unalterable, set of theoretical propositions about which the powerful and the knowledgeable had no doubt was widespread. Moreover, the often-implicit corollary espoused by the more politically motivated of the Consensus’ proponents was that most dissent with its policies was often inspired by anti-market ideologies, nationalism, anti-Americanism and other forms of the modern-day equivalents of obscurantism. In 1993, Williamson explained that “we can now develop far more consensus . . . [because] we now know much more about what types of economic policy work.”2 Really? Perhaps that was the case a few years back or what the world needed to believe at the time. But an objective assessment of the situation shows that, while some convergence did emerge, confusion rather than consensus characterized then and now the intellectual climate among experts in the field of economic development and market reforms. In t
