A Global Consensus? The Contested History of Structural Adjustment in the Age of Shock

The history of the late 20th century international political economy – from the 1973 oil crisis to the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 – is often told as a succession of shocks. It has been argued that the resulting disorientation allowed for the global imposition of “structural adjustment”: policies favoring the removal of state regulations and subsidies, the privatization of public assets and services, and the liberalization of trade and foreign investment – “neoliberal globalization” to some. Others argue that there was simply no alternative to these policies because of economic constraints at the time. Accepting neither the imposition nor the no-alternative thesis, ShockAge posits that there were political choices in the South, East and West within a constrained field of maneuver. The project rejects the narrative of a quasi-natural global takeover of neoliberal ideas and instead emphasizes the highly contested nature of the “neoliberal turn”. By going beyond the national or regional level and transnational global (dis)connections, it inquires how structural adjustment became a global phenomenon in the first place. In four subprojects, ShockAge will investigate the contestation of structural adjustment and inquire about the room for maneuver by different actors and the alternatives pursued: 1) at the international/intergovernmental level (focusing on the “Group of 77” of self-described developing countries), 2) at the level of international financial organizations (World Bank and International Monetary Fund), 3) at the national level (Bolivia, a key site of structural adjustment), and 4) at the transnational activist level (“anti-globalization” protests in divided Germany). ShockAge uses a global history approach to revise our understanding of a hinge moment in recent history and breaks new ground in the entangled histories of the North-South confrontation, neoliberalism, international organizations, and popular challenges to late 20th-century “globalization.”