The paper aims at featuring the pension reform of 1999 apart of common beliefs and common wisdom. The analysis guided by the fundamental social problems in Poland leads to a rather pessimistic conclusion. The arrangements of the pension reform introduced after 1998 do not contribute to social security neither protect all members of the system against poverty. The World Bank-recommended arrangement, popularly called 'the second pillar', is of no help to any social question. Instead, providing funds to the financial sector seems to be a priority of the reform. Reorganization of the pension system in Poland has been inspired by development of banking and securities trading considered as a stimulus to economic growth. Then the basic motive was of economic rather than of social nature.
The paper focuses on the controversial aspects of the policies conducted by the World Bank Group towards the debtor countries, including the neoliberal framework of the so-called Washington Consensus, implemented under the influence of the U.S. and leading Western economies. The author analyzes the historical context of the formation of international financial institutions' recommendations and the neoliberal development model, promoted as a cure to socio-economic fallacies leading to debt crises. Since the 1980s global IFI's have proposed a policy of reduced public expenses, low tariffs, and privatization of state-owned companies in place of high-government spending, protectionism and dirigisme. With the financial crises in the subsequent years, the IFI-promoted agenda became the subject of raising controversies. The main critical orientations in the debate on the Consensus - liberal, social democratic and Marxist - are discussed in reference to ongoing attempts to reform the international financial architecture on the basis of commonly accepted development patterns. Among the particularly significant points of the dispute are 'market fundamentalism' opposed to etatism, as well as the clash between the priority of fast economic growth and a costly social agenda, including goals of poverty reduction, improving access to public services, etc. The presented cases of the International Monetary Fund's questioned response to the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1998, as well as Chavez's Venezuela and chavismo as a regional challenge to the Washington Consensus, reflects the dynamics of the free-market paradigm shifts.
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