ABSTRACT
Introduction In the introduction to this volume, Hout and Robison have argued that the retreat from the market fundamentalism of the ‘Washington Consensus’ (WC) has paved the way for the emergence of a mode of governance characterised by greater attention to the quality of formal and informal institutions and the essentiality of human development, in parallel with the implementation of market-led economic reforms. Accordingly, ‘good governance’ policies became intrinsically linked with the ‘Post-Washington Consensus’ (PWC) paradigm that aimed to reconcile the two separate logics of ‘states’ and ‘markets’ (Cypher and Dietz 1997). Similar to all major international-development actors, the European Union (EU) has fully endorsed the implementation of ‘good governance’ policies in an extended multilateral range of regional free-trade agreements. This has been clearly explicit in the Union’s new Consensus on Development that posits that ‘development is a central goal by itself; and that sustainable development includes good governance, human rights and political, economic, social and environmental aspects’ (EU 2006: 2).
