In this chapter, we show how a consensus has emerged among policymakers that infrastructure is a prerequisite for economic growth and development. The ‘infrastructure gap’ evident in many places is so extensive that it requires an unprecedented amount of private capital. To entice private capital into the infrastructure sector, policymakers have introduced national development plans that extend for two or even three decades into the future. We trace the introduction of this new ‘infrastructure time’ to the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, which undermined the neoliberal assumption that free markets and ‘good governance’ institutions were prerequisites for economic growth in low-and middle-income countries. The orthodox Washington Consensus policy framework was under threat from critics long before traders at Lehman Brothers cleared out their offices. Not only had progressive governments in Latin America begun to ignore some of its components (Grugel and Riggirozzi, 2012), but by 2006 closet Keynesians based at the World Bank publicly questioned the wisdom of orthodox neoliberal policy. According to critics of Washington Consensus orthodoxy within the establishment, it had been applied too rigidly and too fast (Rodnik, 2006). But for its defenders, neoliberal restructuring had failed because it was not implemented in earnest.

The collapse of the highly securitized US housing market precipitated a reconciliation between these two groups. At the core of the consensus that emerged in the wake of the 2008 crisis is a fundamental belief that an infrastructure deficit is inhibiting growth and development (Schindler et al, 2022). There was a recognition that private sector investment in infrastructure had failed to keep pace with demand in the three previous decades of neoliberal restructuring. The result was a deficit of infrastructure that inhibited lowand middle-income countries from integrating with global value chains. Since there was widespread agreement that integration with global value chains catalyses productivity gains, structural transformation, and economic growth (Asian Development Bank and World Trade Organization, 2021), it followed that infrastructure was the missing ingredient in earlier rounds of neoliberal reform that prioritized establishing ‘free’ markets and ‘good’ governance. The policy implication was that (transnational) connectivity across vast spaces needed to be enhanced through the construction of roads, railways, ports, and transhipment facilities. This was attractive to Keynesians because it offered an opportunity for states to boost demand and create jobs while reasserting their role as agents of development.