The three country case studies below all suggest that although neoliberal policies might promote economic development in the long run, in the case of Chile at least, there are some significant negative consequences of this pathway to development.
- Chile in the 1970s
- Boliva in the the 1990s
- India – Contemporary
NB – If you’re here for a blog post about Neoliberalism in India – please click here (I moved it!)
Chile
The following clip from ‘The Shock Doctrine’ outlines the ‘neoliberal experiment in Chile from 1973 onwards, the very first neoliberal experiment in development.
Following the overthrow Salvador Allende, the democratically elected but Socialist President, the American backed Dicator Augusto Pinochet implemented neoliberal economic reforms.
These were written for him by by a group of American economists known as ‘The Chicago school’, headed by Milton Freedman.
Examples of neoliberal policies reforms included the cutting of taxes on imports to 10% (previously Chile had the second most protected economy in the world) and the privatisation of state owned companies.
In the short term – the policies increased unemployment and inflation and inequality and human misery which led to massive social unrest which Pinochet oppressed violently killing tens of thousands of people.
However, 40 years later… Chile is one of Latin America’s leading economies.
Neoliberals might argue tens of thousands of lives is a price worth paying for rapid wealth creation
Neoliberalism in Bolivia
This video clip from ‘The Corporation’ summarizes the case study of water privatization in Bolivia in the 1990s.
- In the early 1990s, one local administrative area within Bolivia was forced to privatise the previously state owned water supply as part of a ‘Structural Adjustment Programme’
- A Multinational took over running the water supply for a profit
- The poorest people couldn’t afford to pay for water.
- This led to massive protests which the government violently suppressed.
- In this case the government eventually renationalised the water supply due to popular demand.
- Did neoliberalism help development?
- If you define progress as the right to clean water then no.
- If you define it as increasing profit for European Transnationals then yes.
Neoliberalism in India
Arundhati Roy notes that ‘Trickle down hasn’t worked in India, but gush up certainly has’
She notes the following three ways in which the Elite in India Benefit from Neoliberal Policies
- Corrupt government officials sign a ‘Memorandum of Understanding’ (MoU) with a Corporation which privatises a chunk of publicly owned land, giving that corporation the right to use that land to establish a business – this either takes the form of mining the raw materials from under the land, or establishing a range of other projects such as Agribusinesses, Special Economic Zones, Dams, and even Formula One racing circuits.
- Taxes are typically kept very low in these deals – often sow low in that local people see little of the financial benefit of the new business. This is especially true were mining is concerned. In 2005, for example, the state governments of Chhattisgarh, Orissa, and Jharkhand signed hundreds of memorandums of understanding with private corporations, turning over trillions of dollars of bauxite, iron ore and other minerals for a pittance – royalties (effectively taxes) ranged from 0.5% to 7%, with the companies allowed to keep up to 99% of the revenue gained from these resources. (Allowing people like Ambanni to build their 27 story houses, rather than the money being used for food for the majority of the Indian population.)
- In a third strand of Neoliberal policy, companies are subjected to very little regulation. It seems that they are allowed to develop their projects without protecting the environment or paying any compensation to people who are negatively affected by these projects.
