Shock Therapy, Social Engineering, and Financial Discipline: What Does an Increasingly Financialized World Mean for Democratic Participation?

Over the last several decades, the Bretton Woods Institutions have come to be drivers of policy in the realms of economic liberalization and development, exceeding their original mandates of fostering monetary cooperation and facilitating post-war reconstruction. The structural adjustment programs of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have engendered mixed results–delivering some countries from financial crises, while inciting riots and compounding state failure in others. Such varied experiences suggest there is some disconnect between the conditions to lending promulgated by these institutions and the realities on the ground. This Note will trace the evolution of high conditionality lending vis-à-vis a number of nations and argue that a relationship between participatory democracy and structural adjustment programs should be forged in the interest of successful lending and authentic national ownership of programs.