Beyond Reaganomics: the long economic crisis and the rebuilding of America, 1974-1988

Thesis

Between 1974 and 1984, the United States experienced an extended period of acute economic turmoil. During this informal decade, unemployment and inflation rates skyrocketed, a number of America’s largest cities and corporations teetered on the brink of bankruptcy, and hundreds of thousands of the nation’s blue-collar workers permanently lost their jobs. Yet a mere four years later, inflation and unemployment rates were falling, the country’s largest industrial corporations were reporting profits, and cities whose decline had once seemed inexorable appeared to be in the midst of a revival.

Most historians place the federal government and the cocktail of laissez-faire economic policies known as ‘Reaganomics’ at the center of their narratives when they talk about this period of U.S. history. Indeed, according to most major works on the 1970s and 1980s, this was a period in which free-market and free trade ideas moved from the margins to the mainstream of American political life and actors associated with the conservative movement seized the political reins and successfully reshaped America’s political and economic landscape in their image.

This dissertation tells a different story. Focussing on public policies enacted at a subnational and sectoral level, Beyond Reaganomics reveals the limited appeal of free-market and free trade ideas amid the profound turbulence of the long economic crisis of the 1970s and 1980s. At the same time, it also highlights the important — but largely overlooked — role that the state played in shaping markets and preventing corporate and municipal failures through interventionist and protectionist policies. Arguing that these were not just moments of exception, this dissertation makes the case that we need rethink our understanding of the political economy of the decades after the 1960s. Instead of thinking of the last three decades of the twentieth century as an era of laissez-faire and free trade, Beyond Reaganomics suggests it is more accurate to regard the last three decades of twentieth century U.S. history as a producer-orientated era in which policymakers across the ideological spectrum sought to use public policy to help the, supposedly embattled, American producer.

Authors: Rowe, D

• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Subjects: History; History of Capitalism; United States History; Political Economy