The Decalogue of Washington Consensus Policies: A Study in Economic Diplomacy

Economic diplomacy focuses on the economic variable of international relations. Like political diplomacy, economic diplomacy involves bargaining and reconciliation of the economic interests of states in the international system. The subject matter of economic diplomacy usually includes; trade and commerce between and among states. Many states and governments now engage in what has been called economic nationalism, that is to say, “governmental direction and control of foreign economic matters”. The aim is to achieve the state’ economic, political or security objectives by protecting the domestic market, increasing trade opportunities abroad; making attracting foreign investment, etc. In the process of this, the personnel of a country’s Foreign Ministry, Diplomatic Missions and Ministry of finance are usually involved. Talks are arranged among states’ representative to iron out difficulties in the way of trade or mutual economic cooperation. The term ‘Washington Consensus’ was coined by John Williamson in 1989 when he was examining the principles of development economics that had guided economic policy in Latin America since 1950s. The Consensus is as set of ten policy presentations or principles promoted by institutions based in Washington DC—primarily, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and US Treasury. This paper is a discourse on the ten major principles of the Washington Consensus,. Using the analytical method and relying mainly on secondary resourse materials from the International Monetary Fund, the paper argue that the consensus is more or less the ‘manifesto for the capitalist economic development ‘which the United States and the West have made and want the whole world to accept it as the only and best blueprint for economic development in line with the spirit and letter of the liberal capitalist market system. The paper in its findings, submit that these ten principles are neoliberal policies imposed on the hapless states in the global south by the Washington based international financial institutions to perpetuate the structural subordination and subjugation of the periphery’s economies for debilitating dependency on the states of the global north and in pursuance to the promotion of the economies of the ‘Core’ or the center that stifled the technological dynamism and economic diversification of the global south in favour of the global north.