A01=Monica Prasad
Author_Monica Prasad
Category=JPS
Category=KCS
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eq_business-finance-law
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eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Product details
- ISBN 9780226679013
- Weight: 595g
- Dimensions: 16 x 23mm
- Publication Date: 01 Jan 2006
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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The attempt to reduce the role of the state in the market through tax cuts, decreases in social spending, deregulation, and privatization - "neoliberalism" - took firm root in the United States under Ronald Reagan and in Britain under Margaret Thatcher. But why did neoliberal policies gain such prominence in these two countries and not in similarly industrialized Western countries such as France and Germany? A comparative-historical analysis of the development of neoliberal politics in these four countries, "The Politics of Free Markets" argues that neoliberalism was made possible in the United States and Britain not because the Left in these countries was too weak, but because it was in many respects too strong. At the time of the oil crisis in the 1970s, American and British tax policies were more progressive, their industrial policy more adversarial to business, and their welfare states more redistributive than those of France and West Germany. Monica Prasad shows that these adversarial structures created opportunities for politicians to find and mobilize dissatisfaction with the status quo.
In France and West Germany, where tax structures were more regressive, industrial policy more pro-growth, and welfare states universal and even reverse-redistributive, neoliberalism could not be anchored in electoral dissatisfaction, and therefore it stalled.
Monica Prasad is assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Northwestern University.
