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

该项目研究了世界银行和国际货币基金组织从20世纪70年代末开始创建的所谓结构调整计划，以应对非洲、亚洲和拉丁美洲不断上升的债务。国际金融机构提供了大量贷款，但这些贷款的发放以经济政策改革为条件，例如向国际贸易和资本开放国内市场、将国有企业私有化和减少补贴。在这种背景下，这些计划被广泛阅读，无论是在当代还是在社会科学中，都被视为“新殖民主义”的命令，并被视为“新自由主义全球化”的工具。这是我计划中的项目的起点，该项目询问，将结构调整计划理解为(去)全球化的工具在多大程度上是有意义的。我从这样一个假设开始：结构调整计划代表着核心的“直到现在的剧变”，引发了全球化和去全球化的动力，例如，当国际货币基金组织诱导的社会开支削减使全球消费文化的承诺明显无法实现时。此外，我对它们的理解既不完全是“新殖民主义”所规定的，也不是完全自愿的改革计划。该项目以赞比亚为例，奉行一种明确以行动者为中心的方法，目的是分析各自的行动范围，并阐明所有行动者。除世界银行和国际货币基金组织外，这还包括中央捐助国政府，特别是美国和德意志联邦共和国政府以及债务国。此外，在赞比亚和全球北部也有顾问、记者和社会运动。为了捕捉这些不同的视角，我计划利用金融机构的档案资料以及上述三个国家的大量档案。目标是一部赞比亚结构调整经验的全球历史，从历史的角度深入研究一个具体的案例研究，以便公正地处理调查对象的复杂性和矛盾性。在大多数档案材料解密后，该项目首先可以提供比20世纪80年代和90年代的政治学家或经济学家所能提供的对谈判、实施和对正在研究的项目的看法更有见地的分析。其次，它超越了现有的史学著作，后者通常只关注一群演员--国际金融机构的官员、西方政府官员或节目的知识教父。第三，它有助于对(去)全球化进程的历史研究，有助于全球经济秩序的起源，从而有助于“现在的史前”。

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.”