Contents :
The papers in this volume were presented at the internationalconference on "New Approaches to the Design of Development Policies"organized by the Arab Planning Institute (API) in Beirut, Lebanon. In addition to these papers, two invited papers were prepared for, andpresented in, the conference by Ibrahim El-Issawy and Mehdi Shafaeddin. Thepaper by El-Issawy is on "Self-Reliant Development: An Alternative Modelto the Washington Consensus and the Possibility of its Implementation in theGlobalization Era"; while that by Shafaeddin is on "Is IndustrialPolicy Relevant to the 21st Century?". These two papers are not includedin this volume, but are published as special papers.
In the call for papers for the conference it is noted that themotivation for holding the conference under the above title is the observationthat over the period since 1980, and up to the recent past, the design ofdevelopment policies in developing countries was dominated by StructuralAdjustment Programmes (SAPs) of various vintages. This general approach has cometo be termed the Washingtonconsensus. Under this approach, and according to the World Bank a “country withpoor policies would be one with high inflation, large fiscal imbalances, and aclosed trade regime” (World Bank (1998)).