The dominant policy response to economic crises over the past four
decades has been the introduction of austerity—a mix of budget
cuts and reforms to downsize the role of the state. The
International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been the world's lender of
last resort and leading advocate of austerity, and has been
consistently chastised by policymakers and civil society for the
consequences of its economic policy reforms on social protection.
Critics of the IMF have identified so-called structural adjustment
programs as a key cause of global increases in poverty, widespread
disease, and unemployment. In the face of such criticisms, the IMF
has advanced a narrative of wholesale reform to its practices. In A
Thousand Cuts, Alexandros Kentikelenis and Thomas Stubbs provide a
systematic and comprehensive analysis of IMF policies around the
world. Based on novel data from the IMF archives, Kentikelenis and
Stubbs have generated a replicable database of all IMF-mandated
reforms from 1980-2019 to examine their effects on social policies
and outcomes. They reveal that although the precise content of
IMF-mandated austerity has changed considerably over time, the
organization continues to place a high burden of reform on
countries in crisis. These reforms then decrease the availability
of important social services and contribute to rises in income
inequality and decline in population health. Kentikelenis and
Stubbs argue that in spite of reform rhetoric, the IMF's
practices—and the outcomes they produce—have changed very
little over the past three decades. As one of the first systematic
assessments of the impact of austerity on people's lives around the
world, A Thousand Cuts makes an important contribution to the
continuing debate regarding the consequences of the IMF and how it
might better support social protection.
General
Imprint: |
Oxford UniversityPress
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
August 2023 |
Authors: |
Alexandros Kentikelenis
(Associate Professor of Political Economy and Sociology)
• Thomas Stubbs
(Reader in Global Political Economy)
|
Dimensions: |
235 x 156mm (L x W) |
Pages: |
272 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-19-063773-6 |
Categories: |
Books
|
LSN: |
0-19-063773-0 |
Barcode: |
9780190637736 |
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