Woo: Some Fundamental Inadequacies of the Washington Consensus

Woo, WT. 2004. Some Fundamental Inadequacies of the Washington Consensus: Misunderstanding the Poor by the Brightest.

"The Washington Consensus suffers from fundamental inadequacies, and that a more comprehensive framework of the economic process is needed to guide the formulation of country-specific development strategies. The following five propositions summaries the set of interrelated arguments made in this paper" (1).

1. it shows a poor understanding of patterns of Asian growth.

2. the current goal of The Consensus is to get "institutions" right. However, this is not concrete.

3. it has the potential to overly stifle the state

4. there is a lack of understanding regarding the centrality of the state in the development of new technologies.

5. it assumes that all countries are under similar structural constraints, which is empirically problematic.

There is a list of 10 policies that the Washington Consensus favors on page 3.

The history of the Washington Consensus is explored, and the reliance on proper institutions in its later iteration is criticized.

The remainder of the article represents an excellent critique of the Washington Consensus.