Call for papers

“Neoliberalism” is often associated with the economic policies implemented by both Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s government in the UK and Ronald Reagan’s administration in the US. On 4 May 2019, forty years had passed since Margaret Thatcher’s first election to power and the beginning of what is still presented today as the Anglo-Saxon neoliberal turning point. It now seems relevant to carry out a fresh analysis of this historical turning point to analyse its origins and legacy. It is also the opportunity to reconsider what was described at the time, on both sides of the Atlantic, as the “Conservative Revolution”.

The first aim of the symposium is to identify the economic, legal and political features of neoliberalism in the UK and the US in the 1980s. This requires an analysis of neoliberalism in relation to the numerous philosophical, historical, sociological, political, legal and economic concepts that it claims to have drawn on, as well as those it opposed, with a view to understanding the connections between them in an Anglo-American paradigm/model.

This analysis leads us to examine other forms of liberalism. For example, considering the “New Deal Liberalism” introduced by American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1930s, which was designed to offer a dynamic conception of fundamental rights that only a strong federal state could guarantee, raises the question of how the term “liberal” was shrewdly redefined from both ideological and lexical perspectives. Answering this question requires a multidisciplinary study of the paradox of laisser-faire imposed by the State, and more fundamentally of the exact place and role of the State in Thatcher-Reagan neoliberalism.

From an economic standpoint – but not from a monetary perspective, which is a notable exception that characterises Thatcher's neoliberal policies – the late 1970s were marked, both in the US and in the UK, by major deregulation policies introduced by governments in numerous sectors such as energy, transport, foreign trade, and, above all, the financial sector. These measures raise questions about the accompanying dogma according to which deregulation, competitiveness, growth and stability are all one and the same thing. Given their centrality the banking and financial systems provide us with a relevant analytical framework conducive to a global reflection on the foundations and the consequences of (neo)liberalism. While appearing as an adaptation of the financial structures of the economy necessary to meet the financial requirements of modern productive systems, Anglo-American financial deregulation gradually spread throughout the world in the 1980s. Interestingly, it was framed by two of the greatest financial crises that our world has seen – those of 1929 and 2008.

The second aim of the symposium is to analyse the scope and spread of Thatcher-Reagan neoliberalism by addressing the question of the legacy that it left in both the UK and the US and to study the acceptance or rejection of the model across the Americas and throughout Europe (European states and the EU). It seems particularly relevant to examine the idea of transnational transfer through the circulation of ideas, the role of think tanks and the Mont Pèlerin Society to complement recent studies based on transnational perspectives and methodologies.

The EU, as a whole, is the scene of a certain form of legal transformation, exemplified by the European Commission’s opening up of network industries to competition in the late 1990s. This legal transformation can be seen as drawing, more or less, on neoliberalism and/or corporate governance processes and techniques. In this respect, it seems interesting to analyse both the origins and specific features of this model of governance and its impact on the way law is created and on the resulting laws at EU level. More generally, with regard to European institutions, we shall be considering the link between Anglo-American liberalism and the ordoliberalism of German origin. We seek to understand to what extent the political, legal and economic influence of ordoliberalism at a European level may have been enhanced or, on the contrary, challenged by Anglo-American neoliberalism.

It is relevant, and useful, to shed light on the present days’ woes, and therefore make a contribution to national and European debates which question both the social liberalism paradigm and the trend towards nationalism and protectionism.