Have states stopped steering markets? Rethinking neoliberal interventionism and periodization in the United States and the United Kingdom

Abstract

The United Kingdom and the United States have often been presented as the leaders of a neoliberal revolution that allegedly took place in the 1980s. At this time, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan both intended to put an end to post-war Keynesianism, which had consisted in using state intervention to steer markets to achieve social or economic objectives. This hands-on approach was to be replaced with free market policies inspired by the neoliberal theories of Friedrich A. Hayek and Milton Friedman. Does this mean that the British and American states have ceased to steer markets since the 1980s? This article offers a comparative analysis of the changing role of the American and British states before and after the neoliberal turn of the 1980s in two key markets: finance and energy. Empirical analysis of the major policy shifts that have taken place in these areas since the mid-20th century tend to reveal a neoliberal form of interventionism by which the state continues to steer markets through different mechanisms. While some of these neoliberal steering mechanisms were present well before the 1980s, other steering mechanisms traditionally associated with Keynesianism have endured or resurfaced since the 1980s. This invites us to question historical periodization and the nature of neoliberalism on a transatlantic level.