ABSTRACT
This chapter traces dynamics of failure and adaptation in neoliberal approaches to poverty reduction, focusing in particular on poverty finance interventions. It shows how early articulations of neoliberalism entailed a radical “nationalization” of responsibility for development – placing the focus squarely on national policy choices and explicitly precluding considerations of colonial histories and wider structural patterns of uneven development. This rescaling, both ideational and institutional, of development has simultaneously undercut the viability of neoliberal interventions in development and profoundly shaped the terms on which successive failures have been addressed. The chapter develops these arguments by highlighting the ways that early articulations of neoliberal thought in development framed colonial histories and their import for economic development. It then shows how this “rescaling” of development played out through an overview of neoliberal poverty finance interventions. “Poverty finance” here is understood in terms of interventions aimed at extending access to financial services to populations historically not served by mainstream financial institutions.
