The Neoliberal Feedback Loop: World Bank Projects in the Caricom Region

• In Event: 286 - Section on Sociology of Development Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Paper Session: Table 02. Institutions

Abstract

An analysis of the World Bank’s projects in the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM) between 1956 and 2012 showed that the Bank has been evolving from a long-term development agency to one which has largely been concerned with managing and mitigating crises. Crises have become the starting point of a neoliberal feedback loop. The development aid/funding necessary to manage these crises come with neoliberal conditionalities, which limit and restructure governments in the periphery in order to facilitate the flow of capital. However, because the projects do not resolve the crises, the loop is reinitialized by subsequent (financial) crises and (natural) disasters. Originally, the larger, resource-rich countries of CARICOM—like Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago—received all the region’s projects. This was during the modernization era of the 1960s, and most projects were concerned infrastructure and industry in countries with sufficient size/resources to develop. However, with the rise of globalization, the Bank’s projects have largely been concerned with restructuring the nature of government. In the last decade, most CARICOM projects have been in the Public Administration, Law and Justice sector, reflecting the neoliberal impetus to transform peripheral countries’ governments and make them more receptive to foreign capital. Recent infrastructure projects in the region have been in direct response to natural disasters (hurricanes) which continue to roil the region’s long-term development initiatives.

Author

• David Valentine Bernard, University of the West Indies