Abstract
Although recent studies have extensively traced the development of neoliberal ideas in international think-tanks since the late 1930s, scholars of early neoliberalism have paid far less attention to the translation of these ideas into policy. Current scholarship predominantly identifies the introduction of neoliberal policies with a paradigm shift among policymakers in the late 1970s and depicts the early neoliberal movement as an idea-centred and isolated phenomenon that was unable to put its ideas into practice. This article argues instead that early neoliberals employed an idea-centred approach to politics to establish a coalition of like-minded academics, journalists, politicians and policy officials. Focusing on the Netherlands, it demonstrates how this strategy brought neoliberals press coverage, influence within the Christian democratic parliamentary parties and acknowledgement among professional economists. On the one hand, their struggle to exert influence over policy matters contributed to the implementation of pro-market industrialization policies, which, ironically, were pursued by a coalition of social democrats and Christian democrats. On the other hand, it also compelled them to include Christian-democratic views in their political agenda, leading to a corporatist-neoliberal policy synthesis whose features exhibit remarkable similarities to German ‘ordoliberal’ ideas.
Highlights
Recent studies have extensively traced the development of neoliberal ideas in international think-tanks since the late 1930s, scholars of early neoliberalism have paid far less attention to the translation of these ideas into policy
The story of neoliberalism in the Netherlands throughout the decades of post-war reconstruction (1945–1958) boils down to a struggle waged by politicians without a party
Convinced of the power of ideas, they aimed to establish a thought collective made up of politicians, academics, journalists and businessmen in order to move Dutch socioeconomic policies in a market-oriented direction as fostered by the state. By putting this tenet front and centre in this article, I have questioned three commonly held assumptions in political history: namely that ideologies are tied to parliamentary parties, that political struggle predominantly takes place within political institutions, and that knowledge formation and the exertion of political power occur separately
Summary
Without diminishing the importance of common interests and institutions, it is impossible to imagine the formation of a neoliberal ‘thought collective’ – uniting businessmen, politicians, policy officials and journalists – without the shared ideas that brought these groups together. In early 1948, he met with the West German economist Ludwig Erhard, a member of the Mont Pelerin Society, to be informed about Erhard’s pleas for a state-fostered market economy; their tete-a -tete took place just months before each man would became the minister of economic affairs in their respective countries.[78] In his memoirs, published in 1984, Van den Brink emphasized that he did not aspire to duplicate Erhard’s pro-market plans, which he deemed overly individualist He emphatically preferred Erhard’s approach to socialist alternatives and aimed to reconcile his Christian democratic values with the German economist’s proposals.[79] It soon turned out that Huysmans’s successor sold his policy agenda with a less overtly ideological pitch and displayed a particular talent for merging his own Christian democratic rhetoric with the rhetoric of his opponents, while keeping pro-market policy tenets clearly in view.
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