The Social Contract in Crisis?  The Transformation of the Postwar Order in Western Europe
I.  Introduction:  five features of the postwar order
II. The West German Social Democrats in Power
III. The Postwar Economic Miracle Sputters
IV. Some other directions in Europe in the 1970s-1980s
IV. Mrs. Thatcher’s Britain: A Capitalist Revolution?

a quick refresher on the postwar order in Western Europe:
1. the economic miracle
2. the welfare state
3. consensus politics
4. dismantling of colonial empires
5. moves toward European integration
altogether:  the reinvention of parliamentary democracy

Adenauer’s “chancellor democracy”
one-party rule (Christian Democrats, 1949-1966)
economic miracle

West Germany in 1960s:
--SPD vote rises
--student unrest
--trials of Nazi crimes: Eichmann, Frankfurt Auschwitz trials

SPD = Social Democratic Party
Bad Godesberg program
Willy Brandt (SPD; mayor of West Berlin, then chancellor 1969-1974)
Ostpolitik (“eastern policy”)
1. part of détente
2. recognize borders with Poland
3. improved relations with East Germany (“engagement”)
4. moral responsibility for Holocaust
Warsaw Ghetto memorial
Vergangenheitsbewältigung = coming to terms with the past

the economic slowdown after 1973
“oil price shock” -- OPEC
“stagflation” = stagnation (slow growth, high unemployment) PLUS inflation at the same time (1973-1979: 10.9%)
“the death of Keynes?”
underlying issues:
--long-term investment
--productivity growth

other directions in the 1970s-1980s:

(i): France in the 1980s
socialist president: François Mitterand (1981-1995)
nationalization of industries: the last gasp of postwar socialism? (rapidly abandoned)
co-opting, decline of French Communist Party
rise of the National Front Party
Jean-Marie Le Pen
anti-immigrant | chauvinist | anti-European Union

relatively high unemployment
continuing consensus about welfare state

(ii): the Southern Renaissance
three transitions to democracy:
1. Spain (post-Franco)
2. Portugal (post-Salazar)
3. Greece (post-military junta)
all three admitted to European Union in 1980s
economic development aid
political support for democracy

Margaret Thatcher
neo-liberalism (free-market conservatism)
aim:  to dismantle the “nanny state”
economic agenda:
1. break the labor unions (coal miners’ strike, 1984-85)
2. cut social spending
3. re-privatize nationalized industries
>>> back to classical liberalism, 50 years after the Great Depression
riots in Brixton (south London), Liverpool, Manchester
Falklands (Malvinas)War (1982) | Argentina

“There is no such thing as society.”
--Margaret Thatcher

vs. Eastern Europe’s citizens’ movements:
“A concept that played a central role in opposition thinking in the 1980s was that of ‘civil society.’”
(Garton Ash)