THE DYNAMICS OF POLICY CHANGE - WHAT HAPPENED TO THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING NATIONS IN THE 1980S

Abstract. The paper seeks to identify the reasons why the English‐speaking advanced capitalist nations experienced a greater impetus to transform established policy strategies in the 1980s than did other OECD nations. Although the particular manifestation of the challenge to policy orthodoxy varied in each of these nations, all were characterized by the emergence of political forces committed to a fundamental redefinition of the role of state and economy in the direction of lessened state intervention and greater scope for market forces. A variety of exploratory hypotheses seeking to account for the differences between the English‐speaking and other OECD countries in this respect are examined, including the impact of state size, the state of the economy, the extent of policy effectiveness and the political dynamics of party and electoral systems. Copyright © 1990, Wiley Blackwell. All rights reserved