Many commentators have equated globalization with the Washington Consensus which implies eleven key commitments:
1. International financial market liberalization;
2. Domestic capital market liberalization;
3. Trade liberalization (particularly in developing countries);
4. Labor market ‘flexibility’;
5. Secure individual property rights over physical and financial assets;
6. Weak property rights over human assets (particularly skills);
7. Reduction in size and role of the public sector, including privatization of publicly-owned productive assets, and an end to managed trade and industrial policies;
8. System of taxation that is not only less progressive but also shifts taxes from capital to labor, and subsidies from labor to capital;
9. Independent central banks (as part of a more general move towards the ‘technocratization ‘ of economic policy making);
10. ‘Social safety net’ type of approach to social protection, i.e., more targeting, selectivity and conditionality;
11. Privatization and liberalization of social policy.
Source: ILO: Economic security for a better world 2004)