ABSTRACT
During the 1980s, many developing countries entered upon a process of fi nancial liberalisation in which government controls over market operations, resource allocation and capital fl ows were removed or loosened. The driving force behind this wave of neo-liberal orthodoxies stemmed mainly from the traumas of the oil price shock and the ensuing economic crisis, which forced fundamental reorientation of development strategies across developing countries and thrust the issue of fi nancial reform onto their policy agenda. Coupled with the economic crisis was a cross-national ideological crusade against state interventionism that found its most explicit and forceful expression in the Washington consensus. International fi nancial agencies, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and major industrial powers exerted strong political pressures upon the governments of developing countries to expand the role of market forces.
