Adapting to the market: leftist ideological justifications of liberal economic policies, 1977-1986

Virginia Crespi De Valldaura G and Gianmarco Fifi

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Why do leftist forces accept, support and adopt free-market policies? To answer this question, we carry out a comparative study of left-wing groups (both parties and trade unions) in France, Italy and Spain during the late 1970s and the early 1980s. This period is widely acknowledged in international political economy to have represented a paradigm shift from post-war Keynesianism to neoliberal policy-making. We employ in-depth content analysis of memoirs, interviews to the press, opinion articles and policy-papers to explain actors’ positions on landmark policies implemented during such transition. In alignment with a developing literature in political economy (e.g. Mudge 2018), we find a proactive role of progressives in developing the ideological justification for the resort to liberal policies. However, we emphasise that widespread consensus among so-called progressives, rather than a leading role of technocrats or party experts, best explains such shifts. In this way, the paper casts doubts on interpretations of the liberalisation process that place excessive emphasis on the role of external constraints as well as on elite power. Drawing on Hall (1993), we argue that left-wing forces in the early 1980s have enacted a ‘second order change’, whereby policymakers use new instruments to meet existing policy objectives.

Keywords: austerity; Left; neoliberalism; trade unions; Western Europe (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 16 pages
Date: 2024-10-31
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-hpe, nep-pke and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in New Political Economy, 31, October, 2024, 29(5), pp. 788 - 803. ISSN: 1356-3467

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/122747/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:122747

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().