ABSTRACT
This rhetoric has been deployed in stages, beginning with the management of the debt crisis in the 1980s via structural adjustment programmes. The rhetoric had currency in part because it was implemented as a virtuaism, notably in the form of structural adjustment programmes, which reconfigured power relations both within and between states. Structural adjustment measures were adopted generally, whether imposed or voluntary, with the latest, 1990s, round affecting Southeast Asia and Europe, although with some resistance. Those states that did not formally undergo structural adjustment have done so informally in order to compete in the global economy, justifying the measures in the name of market conditions. Under structural adjustment programmes, states were pressured to pursue creditworthiness and competitiveness in the global economy, at the expense of purely national priorities, especially welfare enhancement and the sustaining of political constituencies supportive of national economic integration.
