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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Reconsidering the Power of the IFIs: Tanzania and the World Bank, 1978-1985 |
Author: | Holtom, Duncan |
Year: | 2005 |
Periodical: | Review of African Political Economy |
Volume: | 32 |
Issue: | 106 |
Period: | December |
Pages: | 549-567 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | Tanzania |
Subjects: | economic policy World Bank IMF 1980-1989 Development and Technology Economics and Trade international relations Politics and Government History and Exploration |
Abbreviation: | IFIs=International Financial Institutions |
External link: | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03056240500467054 |
Abstract: | The capitulation of the Tanzanian government in 1985 to the demands of the IMF and the World Bank to implement a structural adjustment programme (SAP) stands as a landmark in relations between the Bank, IMF and sub-Saharan African States. After six years of bitter struggle, Nyerere's Tanzania, leader of the non-aligned movement and standard bearer of African socialism, had given into the demands of international capitalism. This paper examines why the Tanzanian government resisted neoliberal policies promoted by the Bank and IMF for six years before acceding to them in 1985. As an aid-dependent country, the ability of the Bank and IMF to mobilize and withhold aid was a decisive factor. Nevertheless, this does not explain why Nyerere drove the country right to the very brink of collapse, before turning back. The paper argues that the discourses within the Bank and the Tanzanian government came to circumscribe the realm of 'rational' policy, and therefore their ability to compromise. By drawing upon the work of Peter Hall (1993), the paper examines how discursive change within the government that could have allowed agreement to be reached in 1979, was blocked. Bibliogr., notes, ref. sum. [ASC Leiden abstract] |