From Keynesianism to the knowledge economy: the rise and fall of growth regimes

Abstract

This essay explores the evolution of postwar growth regimes, understood as the economic and social policies used by governments to pursue economic growth in the developed democracies. It charts movement in growth regimes from an era of modernization stretching from 1950 to 1975, through an era of liberalization running from 1980 to the late 1990s, to a subsequent era of knowledge-based growth. It argues that the capacities of democratic governments to pursue specific growth regimes depend, not only on economic circumstances, but also on evolving electoral conditions, marked especially by changes in the cleavage structures conditioning partisan electoral strategies. The essay concludes by exploring the implications of contemporary electoral politics for the development of growth regimes appropriate to a knowledge economy.