FROM the 1980s to the 1990s, no two institutions had more suasion and influence over the development and growth policies of nations than the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, collectively called the IMF-World Bank. The foundational principles that it preached with consistency and discipline were, and still are, open borders, the free flow of goods and capital and unfettered trade.
The two institutions were clear on what kind of policies they wanted to eviscerate — the totality of policies that are anathema to the openness doctrine. Although the IMF-WB did not directly dictate to nations the timelines within which the state mandarins had to carry out the dismantling of the economic policies and practices that the two deemed as both archaic and out of sync with the openness paradigm, they subtly leveraged their lending and support mandates to the compliance with the dismantling of the archaic and cumbersome policies and practices.
