International Financial Institutions and the Rethinking of the State in the Age of Neoliberal Globalization (from the 1990s to Covid-19)

In this paper we analyse the documents of two prominent international financial institutions (IFIs), the IMF and the World Bank, in order to shed light on how these institutions conceived of the role of the State since the 1990s, and legitimated the reform of State institutions. By paying particular attention to the question of State reform, we argue that IFIs played a strategic role in providing for a “global” framework to guide and legitimate the transformations of the State at national level. On more empirical grounds, we perform a diachronic analysis of IFIs’ discourse on the State, by comparing three junctures: (a) the 1990s, i.e. the crucial decade of the ‘globalization project’, (b) the global financial crisis of 2008 and its aftermath, and (c) the current Covid-19 crisis. Through the development of a detailed account how IFIs conceive the State and its role, the paper aims to make sense of the State–market relations on a more pragmatic way, and in the light of both junctures of economic expansion and crisis. In the final section, through a preliminary analysis of the documents produced during the Covid-19 pandemic, we highlight also some possible innovations in State discourse compared to the previous phases. In the light of the empirical analysis, the main argument of the paper is that IFIs conceived the State as key to the long-term development and preservation of market economy.