Imf's Discourse of the Liberalisation Reforms in Developing Economies: The Case of Macedonia
The objective of my research is to critique the International Monetary Fund (IMF) stance and the benefits for small, open economies of allowing the free movement of capital. The main focus here is to explore the construct of IMF’s discourse in the process of Financial Liberalisation (FL) of the Macedonian economy. In this paper I explore the extent to which this stance impacted upon and influenced the economic policies of Macedonia. This involves providing a contextualized, critical account of the policy of the IMF, focusing on a comparison of its policies during the early 1990s through policy documents, political discourse and enacted policies in Macedonia.
Furthermore, in order to critique the neo-liberal ideology as a dominant discourse in a developing economy such as Macedonia I employ discourse analysis. The main focus of this analysis as part of the discourse theory (DT) is to determine and investigate the tools used through which ‘meaning is produced, fixed, contested and subverted within the particular text’ (Howarth, 2004:341). Therefore, the analytical framework used in this analysis involves reading the text by considering the symbols it includes, deconstructing and interpreting the text, as well as reconstructing it in order to investigate how the text is developed and employed in practice.
After introducing the importance of the IMF throughout the years in section one, this paper continues with section two which highlights the main duties and critique of the IMF in developing countries. The involvement of the Fund in Macedonia is presented in section three, after which the analytical framework of discourse analysis is presented. Section five presents the findings and section six concludes the paper.