Thatcher’s Progress: From Social Democracy to Market Liberalism through an English New Town. By Guy Ortolano. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. xvi+302. $39.99 (cloth); $32.00 (Adobe eBook Reader). The New Enclosure: The Appropriation of Public Land in Neoliberal Britain. By Brett Christophers. London: Verso, 2018. Pp. xviii+362. $29.95 (cloth); $19.95 (paper); $9.99 (e-book).

This chapter looks at how Swedish Social Democracy was eventually challenged by the doctrines honoured by the prize it had created. Economists first took their place among the Nobel Prize winners in 1969, at the height of the golden age of Social Democracy in Sweden. The prize was paid by the central bank out of public money. However, a chronic economic crisis in the 1970s drove voters away from Social Democracy and towards a market liberalism which finally prevailed (for a while) in the 1990s. The focus here is on the role of economic theory. For this purpose, the travails of Social Democracy are followed as they affected the public trajectory of Assar Lindbeck (b. 1930), ‘the key figure in Swedish economics’. The discipline of economics in Sweden mostly spoke with one voice in this period, so this method provides for a sharp focus and fewer words.

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Conclusions

Anti-System Politics ◽

10.1093/oso/9780190699765.003.0009 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 248-258

Author(s):

Jonathan Hopkin

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Financial Crisis ◽

Interwar Period ◽

Free Market ◽

Social Democracy ◽

Political Authority ◽

Market Model ◽

System Support ◽

Ultimate Failure ◽

Market Liberalism

This concluding chapter addresses the implications of anti-system politics for the future of capitalism and democracy in the advanced countries. It argues that the current wave of anti-system support reflects the ultimate failure of the project of “market liberalism,” in that the limitations of the market logic have been laid bare by the financial crisis and the inability of the free market model to deliver prosperity and security. The answer to this crisis is likely to involve a reassertion of political authority over the market: either a revival of social democracy, the guiding ideology of the inclusive capitalism of the second half of the twentieth century, or a return to the nationalism and mercantilism of the interwar period.

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Development between nuance and neo-liberalism

Focaal ◽

10.3167/fcl.2008.510115 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 2008 (51) ◽

pp. 161-168

Author(s):

Bram Büscher

Keyword(s):

Social Democracy ◽

Policy And Practice ◽

Cambridge University ◽

Duke University ◽

The Will ◽

Aid Policy

David Mosse, Cultivating development: An ethnography of aid policy and practice. London: Pluto Press, 2005, 315 pp., 0-7453-1798-7.Tania M. Li, The will to improve: Governmentality, development, and the practice of politics. Dur- ham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007, 374 pp., 0-8223-4027-0 (paperback).Richard Sandbrook, Marc Edelman, Patrick Heller and Judith Teichman, Social democracy in the global periphery: Origins, challenges, prospects. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, 289 pp., 0-521-68687-7 (paperback).

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