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The Free Market Theory

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Submitted By nyamuscom
Words 2759
Pages 12
MSc Development Studies

Perspectives of Development

Presentation Assignment: The Free-market Theory/The Free Enterprise Theory/Economic Liberalism

Key Words: Laissez faire, Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’, liberalism, supply and demand, nationalization, privatization, deregulation, rational choice liberalism, neo-liberalism

Between 1970 and the last decade before the millennium, there took place a remarkable and dramatic change in the attitude towards the role of the state in economic activities. According to Shutt (1998), during the late 1950 and 60’s, there developed a near consensus among economists especially those linked to the Chicago School of Thought that laissez-faire capitalism was the dominant economic system and that deviation from it was untenable and unsustainable.

The argument was that in order to achieve a modicum of development all countries must dedicate themselves to establishing fully liberalized economic, political and cultural systems in which the state plays a minimal role or simply put that of an adjudicator. The rise in what came to be popularly known as the free market economy owed/s much to the failure of the economic models based on extensive state intervention (this was particularly so after the Second World War) to deliver adequate levels of prosperity or security as was signified following the fall of the Soviet Union.

As will be argued in this paper using theories from Peter Berger (1985) and Hernando De Soto this apparent logic, especially as far as it was provided as the panacea for rapid economic growth for newly independent African countries including Zimbabwe in the 1990s (Dr. Bernard Chidzero instigated and designed structural adjustment program) is profoundly perverse as much as was the case with the prescriptions coined under the modernization theory.

It will be concluded in this paper that any move by the

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