The positions established by these

The positions established by these founders of neoliberal theory began to be taken seriously again in a context of economic crisis and political revision during the 1970s and early 1980s. By the end of the 1980s a system of recommendations based in neoliberal ideas became standard in conventional international economic policy circles. One account of these changes, widely referred to, was advanced by John Williamson, senior fellow at the (Washington-based) Institute for International Economics. In 1989 Williamson (1990, 1997) coined the term “Washington Consensus” to refer to the policy reforms imposed when debtor countries in Latin America were called on to “set their houses in order” and “submit to strong conditionality”—what Latin America needed, according to Washington. By “Washington,” Williamson meant the political Washington of the U.S. Congress and senior members of the administration and the technocratic Washington of the international financial institutions, the main economic agencies of the U.S. government (the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve Board), and the think tanks, such as the one at which he works. By “policy,” he meant policy instruments rather than more general objectives of policy or the eventual outcomes of policy. In terms of the institutional formation of recent neoliberal economic policy, the term “Washington Consensus” can be used to refer to ideas pushed by such interest groups as the American Enterprise Institute or the Heritage Foundation that brought right-wing “progressive reform” ideals to Washington during the mid-1970s and early 1980s, for instance, or the bureaucratic-technical interests of economists whose professional train- ing in neoclassical economics proved amenable to Hayekian and Fried manesque persuasion.