Neoliberal Globalization or "Global Disconnect"? International Financial Institutions, Western Creditors, Zambia and the History of Structural Adjustment Programs (ca. 1976-1991)

• Applicant: Privatdozent Dr. Jonas Kreienbaum
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 518558902

The project examines the so-called structural adjustment programs that the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund created from the late 1970s onward to counter rising debt in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The international financial institutions provided substantial loans, but conditioned their disbursement on economic policy reforms such as opening national markets to international trade and capital, privatizing state-owned enterprises, and reducing subsidies. Against this backdrop, the programs have been widely read, both contemporarily and in the social sciences, as “neocolonial” dictates and as instruments of “neoliberal globalization.” This is the point of origin for my planned project, which asks to what extent it makes sense to understand structural adjustment programs as instruments of (de)globalization. I start from the hypothesis that structural adjustment programs represent central “upheavals into the present,” triggering both globalization and deglobalization dynamics, for example when IMF-induced social spending cuts made the promises of global consumer culture visibly unattainable. Also, I understand them neither as exclusively “neocolonial” dictates nor as entirely voluntary reform programs. Using the example of Zambia, the project pursues a decidedly actor centered approach that aims to analyze the respective scope for action and to illuminate the entire spectrum of actors. In addition to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, this included the governments of central donor countries, especially the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany, as well as the debtor country. Furthermore, there were consultants, journalists and social movements in Zambia as well as in the Global North. Attempting to capture these different perspectives, I plan to draw on the archival holdings of the financial institutions as well as numerous archives in the three countries mentioned. The goal is a global history of Zambia’s experience with structural adjustment that takes a historically in-depth look at a specific case study in its historical context in order to do justice to the complexity and contradictoriness of the object of investigation. After the declassification of most archival material, the project can, first, provide a much more informed analysis of the negotiations, implementations, and perceptions of the programs under study than was possible for political scientists or economists of the 1980s and 1990s. Second, it goes beyond existing historiographical works, which usually focus on only one group of actors – officials from the international financial institutions, Western government officials, or intellectual godparents of the programs. Third, it thus contributes to the historical study of (de)globalization processes, to the genesis of the global economic order, and thus to the “prehistory of the present.”

• DFG Programme: Research Grants