Imposing local neoliberalism in South East Europe:
How to destroy an economic space without really trying
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Date
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Wednesday, 18 November 2015
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Time
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6:00 - 7:30pm
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Venue
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Cañada Blanch Room, (COW 1.11), 1st floor, Cowdray House, LSE, London WC2A 2AE
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Speaker
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Dr Milford Bateman, Juraj Dobrila University of Pula (Croatia) and St Mary's University in Halifax (Canada)
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Chair
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Dr Vassilis Monastiriotis, LSEE Research on SEE, London School of Economics
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Abstract: The late 1980s saw the major western powers and the development institutions under their control (notably the World Bank, EuropeAid, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development [EBRD]) impose a transition program in the South East European countries founded upon the key imperatives of neoliberalism: that is, commercialisation, liberalization, privatization and minimization (of the state). This ‘neoliberalising’ effort was aggressively carried through with regard to the two most generously financed local financial and non-financial interventions that were expected to give a major boost to local economic development (LED) and local structural transformation - microcredit institutions and enterprise development institutions. Both sets of institutions were structured along neoliberal lines to form what the ILO termed the ‘new paradigm’ model of market-driven LED. The evidence from twenty-five years of the operation of the ‘new paradigm’ LED model in South East Europe shows that it has, essentially, been a calamity. ‘New paradigm’ enterprise development institutions have almost all either collapsed outright or converted into regular consulting bodies, in the process wasting significant amounts of financial aid and imparting almost zero positive influence on local enterprise development, while also deterring (as was intended) the construction of effective local state capacity in this area: likewise, ‘new paradigm’ microcredit institutions have programmatically helped further deindustrialise, informalise and primitivise the poorest local communities, while also draining them of their scarce capital via high interest payments, no more so than in Bosnia, after Bangladesh the most microcredit saturated country in the world. Notwithstanding, because of the EU and wider European elite’s self-interested attachment to core neoliberal principles, the EU still demands of today’s struggling economies in South East Europe that they intensify their engagement with the ‘new paradigm’ LED model as a way out of the current depression. The EU’s active support for deepening the ‘local neoliberalism’ policy approach, therefore, especially as it is applied in depression-hit Greece, can only exacerbate an already catastrophic situation.
Dr Milford Bateman is a freelance consultant on local economic development policy, since 2005 Visiting Professor of Economics at Juraj Dobrila University of Pula, Croatia, and, since 2014 Adjunct Professor of Development Studies at St Mary’s University in Halifax, Canada. After obtaining his PhD in 1993 at the University of Bradford (UK), Dr Bateman took up a tenured position as Lecturer/Assistant Professor in East European Economics at the University of Wolverhampton. As part of his duties, Dr Bateman also became one of the most active University-based policy consultants to the international development community, working on many aspects of local economic and social development policy and programming in post-communist and post-conflict economies. In 2000 Dr Bateman moved fully into the private sector to head up the Western Balkans economic development consulting practice for one of the UK’s leading consulting companies, White Young Green International. He subsequently took the lead on local economic and social development policy and program design and evaluation assignments right across the Western Balkans and Eastern Europe, and more recently (including later as a freelance consultant), he has worked in the Middle East, China, South Africa and Latin America (particularly in Colombia and Cuba). He has undertaken consulting assignments for the World Bank, European Commission, DFID, KfW, UNIDO, WHO, UNDP, UNCTAD and for several international NGOs and local governments directly. Dr Bateman has published widely on issues of local economic and social development through several edited books on entrepreneurship, SME and cooperative development, and through peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. He is the author of the ‘Why Doesn’t Microfinance Work? The Destructive Rise of Local Neoliberalism’ published by Zed Books in 2010, and he is currently finalising a co-edited book with Dr Kate Maclean entitled ‘Seduced and Betrayed: Exposing the Contemporary Microfinance Phenomenon’ which is due out with the University of New Mexico Press in early 2016.
Dr Milford Bateman (left) and Dr Vassilis Monastiriotis (right)
Dr Eddie Gerba (LSE) during the discussion that followed the talk
Dr James Ker-Lindsay (LSE) asking a question
EVENT POSTER
A complete listing of the 2015-16 Visiting Speaker Programme is available here.