New Right Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

The new right refers to a set of political ideas or ideology that developed in the 1970s and that had considerable influence on political debate and public policy for over thirty years. In essence, the new right refers to the renewing and repackaging of classical liberalism as a response to the economic and political crises that affected many Western developed nations in the 1970s. In much of the West during the postwar period, governments developed increasingly interventionist economic and social policies that significantly increased the role and expenditure of the state. However, a combination of rising expectations, the collapse of the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate system between 1968 and 1973, and the rise of oil prices led to a sense that postwar economic intervention was failing.

The new right, in developing the work of thinkers such as Friedrich Hayek, Robert Nozick, and Milton Friedman, provided a critique of the Keynesian welfare state, arguing that government intervention exacerbated economic problems by distorting market signals. Consequently, they rejected the idea that economy could be stimulated through government intervention. Instead they suggested that government spending was creating inflation in economies by expanding the money supply and artificially increasing the level of employment. For new right economists, there was a natural rate of employment that was determined by the market, and intervention artificially increased the price of labor and distorted production.

The new right also believed that government expenditure was crowding out the private sector by soaking up too much money and not allowing the private sector sufficient funds for investment. Other new right thinkers such as William Niskanen argued that politicians and bureaucrats were not public servants but acting in their own, rational self-interest. Consequently, they increased the size of the state, because it enabled the politicians to secure reelection and the bureaucrats to increase the size of their budgets and their status. The consequence was increasing welfare dependency amongst citizens who depend on the state rather than individual initiative to resolve problems.

The new right maintained the need for a significant reduction in the role of the state. Indeed, many on the new right believed the role of the state should be limited to maintaining property rights and order. Because the aim of the new right was to maximize the role of the market and to reduce the role of the state, the new right advocated cutting public expenditure, reducing taxation, disengaging the state from the economy (particularly through privatization), and reducing the scale and extent of welfare programs. The view of the new right was that markets could provide for the more effective coordination of societies and hence produce collective outcomes that were more efficient and did not impinge on individual liberty.

With the apparent failure of welfare states to deal with the economic problems of the 1970s and 1980s, the new right was influential, because it offered a clear and coherent alternative to social and Christian democratic parties. Particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom, new right ideas were highly influential, and leaders such as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan promoted policies directly influenced by new right thinking. In Britain, Thatcher was elected in 1979 on a program of cutting public expenditure, reforming welfare, and reducing the role of the state, and Ronald Reagan was elected president in the United States in 1980 on the basis of a similar program. Both followed monetarist economic policy aimed at reducing the money supply and cutting taxation, and the Thatcher government implemented a long term policy of privatization. The liberal economic agenda became increasingly influential around the world as the ideas of markets as the key organizing principle for the economy replaced the notion that the state could stimulate economic activity.

Nevertheless, the application of new right ideas in practice created significant problems. First, both the Republican and Conservative parties had highly conservative elements who rejected the liberalism of much new right thought. Consequently, new right ideas were married to traditional conservative concerns around issues of morality and social order. Second, rather than reducing the role of the state, the implementation of radical social and economic change often required strong state action, and there was little reduction in the overall level of state activity. Third, especially in Britain, the assault on the welfare state was severely constrained by the impact of economic policies that increased unemployment and the general high level of public support for many welfare measures.

Despite the problems of implementing new right proscriptions, new right thinking has become highly influential throughout the world. Many governments have accepted the importance of the markets and the need for welfare reform, and the managerial revolution has seen the implementation of market criteria in a range of public services. The establishment of the so-called Washington consensus has resulted in many new right policies being taken for granted, and Tony Blair and Bill Clinton both fashioned electoral success by accommodating their center left parties to new right policy prescriptions. Nevertheless, the financial crisis of 2008–2009 has led many governments to rethink the role of unfettered markets in economic coordination, and there has been an increasing backlash against the market-led approach to governance.

Bibliography:

Friedman, Milton. Free to Choose. Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1990.
Gamble, Andrew. The Free Economy and the Strong State: The Politics of Thatcherism. London: Macmillan, 1988.
Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Hayek, Friedrich. The Road to Serfdom. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1944.
Smith, Martin J. Power and the State. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

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