ABSTRACT
By “the new international aid regime”, I am referring to the neo-liberal ascendance in development policy which replaced the prevailing traditional consensus of the 1960s.1 The so-called “neo-classical resurgence” in development theory and practice has marked a significant change in the character of the global “welfare regime”2 and in the balance of power between North and South.3 An understanding of the new international aid regime is critical to understanding recent initiatives in European development policy in Africa. In this chapter I shall examine how these changes have influenced the contemporary discourse on the politics and economics of African development. I shall discuss the evolution of IMF and World Bank intervention in Africa and, in particular, how African states have responded to the imperatives of adjustment under tutelage of the Bretton Woods institutions. We shall discuss the critique of structural reform policies and the more recent developments with regard to “governance” and political conditionality. Such a broad analysis will set the international context within which to understand the new politics of adjustment in general and European development policy in Africa in particular.
