Political and Economic Trends Since the 1960s

Abstract

European economic and social renewal in the 1960s provided strong support for the political status quo. Conservatives in Western Europe and socialists in Scandinavia continued their decades-long rule during this long period of economic resurgence. But the economic downturn that began in the early 1970s helped unseat incumbent political parties throughout Europe as electorates voted for change. A leftward trend that had begun in Western Europe in the 1960s as a result of relaxed East-West tensions and a growing Socialist political moderation accelerated rapidly in the 1970s due to the conservatives’ inability to stem the economic slump and the apparent moderation of European Communists, or Eurocommunists, as they were called for a brief period in the 1970s. Europeans no longer thought that a vote for a Communist candidate was a vote for Moscow. The continued relaxation of tensions between East and West and Europe’s desire to pursue an independent foreign policy had promoted a policy of détente between Western Europe and the Communist world. These contacts, especially the economic ones, became very difficult for Europeans to surrender when United States-Soviet relations worsened in the 1980s and the United States sought to pressure Europeans to cut their often lucrative trade ties with the East. As the economic crisis deepened in the late 1970s, incumbent political parties either lost office or had their majorities sharply reduced.

It’s not a question of conservatism or socialism being ascendant. It’s that people have been voting for change.

Ralf Dahrendorf