ABSTRACT
Neoliberal globalization transformed rather than displaced what was expected of national governments and states. Countries and workforces were brought into what Gregory Albo terms as ‘competitive austerity’2 scrambling for investment and employment opportunities and being forced to accept the discipline of global finance. The task of national governments has come to force such arrangements upon their economies and peoples. In countries of the First World, the burden of competitive austerity and adjustment to financial discipline falls on labour, while in the Third World the burden is shared with rural producers and those in the informal economy. The power of global markets was stated quite starkly in 1997 by Michael Camdessus then Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF); ‘Good policies are rewarded with greater access to international capital markets, higher investment, more jobs and stronger growth. . . . Poor policies, on the other hand, risk financial crisis or marginalization, with all their negative consequences.’3 Of course for the IMF, ‘good policies’ are market policies. Moreover, the IMF took the lead in imposing neoliberal policies
through the structural adjustment programmes ostensibly ‘negotiated’ with client governments. In many places, the task was shared with the World Bank, which imposed conditions upon receipt of assistance for longer-term structural assistance and poverty alleviation.
