‘Smoke and mirrors’: the world bank's social dimensions of adjustment (SDA) programme

The World Bank's 'social dimensions of adjustment' (SDA) policy has developed in a number of phases. The first involved revisions in the development paradigm of the Fund and the Bank that resulted in the incorporation of poverty perspectives. The adoption of 'adjustment with a human face' was part of series of revisions that extended the horizons of neo-orthodoxy in the 1980s, partly in response to theoretical and policy advances within the multilateral institutions and partly in order to co-opt sources of political and intellectual challenge to adjustment (Hutchful 1994). The first phase of adjustment (from 1981 to 1984) concentrated mainly on restoring macroeconomic balances. It assumed that economic recovery would occur quite rapidly, and while recognising that groups could be hurt in the short run by adjustment, did not see a need for specific policies to address poverty issues. It was felt that the longer-term interests of the poor would be best served by macroeconomic reform and that their situation would have been worse had past policies been maintained. In the second phase of adjustment programmes in Africa (roughly 1984 to 1986) there was a recognition that it would take longer to achieve the desired objectives of reform sufficiently to benefit all citizens, and that in the interim vulnerable groups negatively affected by adjustment would require assistance (World Bank 1986). This involved compensatory measures that sought to protect or mitigate the effects of adjustment on specific target groups through welfare and consumption interventions.