ABSTRACT
The ‘Washington Consensus,’ as presented by J. Williamson, was largely based on Latin American debates and ongoing reforms. In Latin America, the need to overcome the ‘lost decade’ of the 1980s also generated a very concrete source of support for reforms. It is increasingly clear that the criticisms of State-led industrialization were simplistic and the expectations generated by the reform process overstated. The chapter provides an overall evaluation of the reform process in Latin America. It is based on wide-ranging research undertaken by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, which provides the most comprehensive evaluation of the reform process available. The chapter looks at the characteristics of the reform process. The implementation of structural reforms aimed at opening up economies to foreign competition and increasing private-sector participation in development began in a few Latin American countries in the 1970s, particularly in the Southern Cone.
