Introduction

Furthermore, the agenda of reforms has become strikingly uniform, both among economists and between countries, summarized in John Williamson’s “Washington Consensus” (1990). The reform programme has become the target for what Bergstein and Williamson call “a global stampede in the last quarter of the twentieth century” (Williamson 1994:3). They continue:

Countries of every geographical region, income level and ideology, have joined the rush. Asians, Europeans, Latin Americans and Africans: countries once among the richest in the world (such as Argentina, Australia and New Zealand) and countries near the bottom: capitalists, socialists and those in between.