Contesting Deregulation: Debates, Practices and Developments in the West Since the 1970s

Few would dispute that many Western industrial democracies undertook extensive deregulation in the 1970s and 1980s. Yet this narrative, in its most familiar form, depends upon several historiographical assumptions that bely the complexities and pitfalls of studying the recent past. Across thirteen case studies, the contributors to this volume investigate this “deregulatory moment” from a variety of historical perspectives, including transnational, comparative, pan-European, and national approaches. Collectively, they challenge an interpretive framework that treats individual decades in isolation and ignores broader trends that extend to the end of the Second World War.

Knud Andresen is a research fellow at the Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte in Hamburg. His recent publications include Gebremste Radikalisierung. Die IG Metall und ihre Jugend 1968 bis in die 1980er Jahre (2016) and European Youth Revolt: European Perspectives on Youth Protest and Social Movements in the 1980s (2016; coedited with Bart van der Steen).

Stefan Müller is a research fellow at the Archiv der sozialen Demokratie (AdsD) der Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. His recent publications include “Humanisierung der Arbeitswelt 1.0. Historisch-kritische Befragung eines Reformprogramms der Neunzehnhundertsiebzigerjahre“ (in Solidarität im Wandel der Zeiten, ed. Willy Buschak, 2016) and “West German Trade Unions and the Policy of Détente, 1969–1989”(Moving the Social: Journal of Social History and the History of Social Movements 52, 2014).