Neoliberals were ready accomplices in Bretton Woods’ collapse

Evidence

After the neoliberal advocates of floating rates won out in the internal debates, they launched a remarkable transnational campaign aimed at convincing key decision-makers and experts of the merits of such a post-Bretton Woods order. The campaign was carried out by both academics and experts from financial institutions. MPS members were prominent in the coordination of the campaign, which involved a concerted communication strategy and sweeping publication efforts on both sides of the Atlantic. It also relied on the organization of the era’s most influential academic conference series on monetary questions aimed at economists, central bankers, and the private banking community. When the Bretton Woods system was on the verge of collapsing in the early 1970s, the flexible exchange rate discourse coalition had built up a powerful international alliance ready with an alternative. It exerted influence through key expert and advisory posts in the Nixon administration, which finally ended the gold parity of the US dollar in 1971 and did not return to a fixed exchange rate regime at the global level thereafter. If not the primary culprits in the death of Bretton Woods, the neoliberals were enthusiastic accomplices in its euthanasia. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 412

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘enthusiastic accomplices in its euthanasia’ framing connects to institutionalist accounts of how policy regimes end — pre-built discourse coalitions ready with alternatives when crisis hits. — connects to: Bretton Woods institutionalized the monetary nationalism Hayek had attacked since the 1930s — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 424; Neoliberals split into warring factions over fixed versus floating exchange rates — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 41; Neoliberals actively engineered their post-crisis survival rather than winning by default — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 23 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Bretton Woods institutionalized the monetary nationalism Hayek had attacked since the 1930s #expands (0.85) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 424
• Neoliberals wanted an international order forcing anti-inflationary policy onto states #expands (0.85) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 425
• Neoliberals captured global financial institutions to discipline nation-states #expands (0.82) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 2131
• Neoliberals pursued an engineered order rather than expecting free markets to emerge naturally #expands (0.80) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1907
• Neoliberals split into warring factions over fixed versus floating exchange rates #corroborates (0.75) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 41
• Neoliberals actively engineered their post-crisis survival rather than winning by default #corroborates (0.72) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 23
• The Third World debt crisis secured neoliberalism’s victory in development discourse #expands (0.72) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1816