Neoliberalism and Development of Economically Progressive Countries - Essay Example

Neo-liberalism Introduction Neo-liberalism shares the concept that wealth and power should be concentrated within thetransformational corporations or groups mostly in the private sector as a result of the implementation of political and economic ideologies. It is an approach to economics and social studies in which the control of the factors for economics are shifted from the public sector to the private sector whereby governments are implored to reduce deficit spending, reform tax laws in order to broaden them, pen up markets to trade by limiting protectionism policies and back deregulation amongst many policies. Therefore, the main points for neo-liberalism include the liberation of markets for free enterprise or private enterprise from any bonds or regulations that may be imposed by the government no matter the social consequences and the cutting of public expenditure for social services like healthcare and education (Elyachar 8). It also includes the deregulation or the reduction of government regulation on any factor that may reduce the profits earned by a person and the protection of job security and the environment. The neo-liberalism may also include privatization or the sale of state-owned enterprises to the private sector as well as the elimination of the concept of public good or community and focusing on individual responsibility. Around the world, neo-liberalism has imposed on countries especially the least developed ones by powerful institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) amongst other institutions. This was meant to spur development of the economies of these nations but at times, the neo-liberalism has engendered new understanding of development in these nations. Neoliberalism is a theory that proposes that the human-beings can be liberated through individual entrepreneurship through a free market and free trade but at times, this may become difficult to achieve depending on the politics and the proper understanding of the developmental interventions. This paper will seek to discuss how neo-liberalism has engendered new understanding of development and whether these understandings were actually as new as they seemed when they were introduced Neo-liberalism and Development The whole point of neo-liberalism is usually that the market mechanism should be allowed to direct the fate of the citizens of the nation and that the economy should dictate the rules to the society and not the converse (West 132). The question therefore is that how can the World Bank and the IMF intervene at will and force nations to participate in the world economy on basically terms that have been deemed unfavorable in the name of neo-liberalism. The concept of neo-liberalism has therefore taken root in nations because the neoliberals have established a wider and impenetrable network of foundations, institutes and scholars amongst other facilitation to push their ideas and doctrines in relentless fashion towards the targeted nations. Neo-liberalism has therefore become a major idea with its dogmatic doctrine and its law-giving institutions that impose their programs on nations and their economies in line with the ideas and concepts of neo-liberalists. It is instructive to note that at the international level, the neo-liberals have concentrated their efforts on the free trade in goods and services, the free circulation of capital and the freedom of investment. With the strengthening of such institutions as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the institutions have moved from supporting collapsing economies to be almost dictatorial in their social and economic policies which are in line with the neo-liberal thinking. The common misgiving about these institutions is that they lack transparency in them and democratic accountability giving credence to the misconception of neo-liberalism that it benefits everyone yet at times it leads to a misunderstanding of development. The engendering of the understanding of development due to the neo-liberalism is therefore due to the fact that at times, it goes contrary to the fact that market life is usually characterized by distinct forms of exchange and modes of value production. This means that the transformation of those forms of value into new sources of profit makes a contribution to the global process of the expansion of the free market even when contributing to the instability of neoliberal free markets. A question that needs to be asked is what happens when the market tries to help the poor socially and economically? In most nations of the world today, neoliberal development programs do offer ordinary citizens the tools of free enterprise as a means to well-being, empowerment and development. These schemes meant to transform the poor into small-scale entrepreneurs make a promise to them of the benefits that the market offers as a means of reaping the rewards of the global market. However, it has now been found that new economic value accorded to cultural resources and social networks of the poor can fuel a broader process that may lead to economic, social and cultural dispossession (Elyachar, 10). Neo-liberalism as a system of accumulation by dispossession in that it is anchored on four arguments mainly the privatization or commodification of public goods and finacialization which turns any good or bad into an instrument of speculation. It also includes the management and manipulation of crises and the redistribution in which the state is the agent of upward redistribution of wealth. Therefore, neoliberalism redistributes the wealth rather than generating it in what is known as capital accumulation by dispossession. The "conservation of development" and "anti-politics" is connected in that these interventions rely on anti-political maneuvering in order that they are taken to be legitimate and derive support in the nation that the neo-liberal activities are carried out at. The anti-politics work as an essential political strategy in the conservation and development interventions and are inherently in the wider political economy of neoliberalism. In the discourse “Conservation Is Our Government Now: Politics of Ecology in Papua New Guinea”, there is an ethnographic assessment of the history and social effects of the conservation and development efforts in Papua New Guinea, which shows a disconnect between the goals of two groups who ran the said programs (West, 182). In this study, the NGO workers thought that they would be able to encourage conservation and cultivate development through the teaching of the Gimi on the economic importance of biodiversity in their existing habitats. The villagers also expected that in exchange for the food, land as well as labor that they offered the workers, they would be recipient of such benefits as medicine and technology, but in the end, due to the divergent nature of their expectations, there was massive disappointment for both. This study presented an ethnographic examination of the social effects of conservation vis-à-vis that of development in Papua New Guinea and demonstrates the relationship between transnational processes and individuals lives laying bare their inadequacies in the understanding of development. In “The Anti-Politics Machine Development, Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho”, through a detailed study of the Thaba-Tseka Development Project situated in Lesotho from the period 1975-1984 evaluates the success or failure of development in terms of what it does, who does it and who the beneficiaries are (Ferguson, 251). This paper presents an analysis of international development aid as applied in a district in Lesotho and confirms that little can be achieved by apolitical interventions in the name of development. Although such schemes like the Thaba-Tseka failed to achieve their originally planned goals, they did have unplanned effect of strengthening and the increasing the power of politically state bureaucracies that are self-serving in nature. The development experts in the case of Thaba-Tseka Development Project therefore misinterpreted the traditional attitudes towards uneconomic livestock with the complex mix of the role gender, money and power play in the rural Lesotho family. Conclusion The neo-liberalism preoccupies itself with the differences in wealth of countries and its citizens that are generated through a market, which is autonomous and constituted through competition. It can however engender the understanding of new development if the citizens in the nation do not have the capacity to be competitive in the market as shown in Africa where it has failed to eliminate poverty which is an existential fact. Therefore, it can be said that the neo-liberalist development practices do not have the humanist impulses that needs to be added into the development agenda of developing or least developed countries such as Papua New Guinea and the Republic of Lesotho. Further, the overreliance on the market forces has led to the neo-liberalist theorists to conceive that development is possible even without considering the local dynamics of the country where the policies are applied. This utter disregard of these least developed countries does not take into consideration that the wealth disparity was caused by the accumulation of wealth by the West at the expense of the countries in Africa or Latin America. Works Cited Elyachar, Julia. Markets of Dispossession: Ngos, Economic Development, and the State in Cairo. Durham: Duke University Press, 2005. Print. Ferguson, James. The Anti-Politics Machine: "development," Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. Cambridge [England: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Print. West, Paige. Conservation Is Our Government Now: The Politics of Ecology in Papua New Guinea. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006. Print. Read More