ABSTRACT
Structural adjustment is not only an economic programme. It also implies adjusting institutions to the workings of the market. In most cases this leads to enormous transfers of income, wealth and power into the hands of the economic and political establishment. This concentration of power and wealth has as its counterpart a certain devaluation of everything that has to do with the social, and hence, marginality and exclusion for the majority of the population. As has been frequently considered, structural adjustment leads to a greater regressiveness of income distribution, unemployment in all its forms, and to a reduction in real wages both direct and indirect. It implies a new model of development or regime of accumulation which could be dubbed as socially and sectorally disarticulated (Amin 1974; de Janvry 1981; Astori 1984; Teubal 1994).
