7 - Conclusions

Summary

If we can achieve a sense of balance, if we can learn the lessons from the failures of the reform agenda of the past, there is at least a glimmer of hope.

Stiglitz (2000: 580)

This book started out with a question: Did governments adopt market-oriented reforms in the 1980s and 1990s as a result of learning?

This question is important, for several reasons. From a substantive point of view, at least two theoretical issues needed to be tackled. First, the argument that the switch to more liberal economic policies during the last two decades of the twentieth century was motivated by a process of learning from past mistakes is prevalent in the literature on market-oriented reforms. Yet, it remained untested. Second, beyond the specific topic of market-oriented reforms, the claim that policies change because policy makers learn from policy failures and successes is hardly questioned in many public policy arenas, both domestic and international; however, it is much more frequently assumed than actually demonstrated. Thus, whether learning actually happens matters for public policy and international relations in general, and for understanding the switch to liberal economic policies at the end of the twentieth century in particular.

In large part, debates about learning have remained in the realm of speculation because of methodological difficulties involved in, first, testing arguments about learning and, second, convincingly demonstrating that policy switches are caused by learning.