This book considers a central issue of our time: the relationship between the macroeconomic objectives of political parties in democratic countries and the legal framework of market economies. The impressive panel of contributors examines social-democratic policies on cartels, market concentration and competition in different European countries, spanning a hundred-year period (specifically the interwar period, the initial postwar period, the 1960s and 1970s, the 1980s and 1990s, and the 2000s).
This thought-provoking volume challenges the dominant belief that the EU’s economic system and competition policy were mainly influenced by neoliberal economic thinking, instead showing that Keynesian and social-democratic positions played a major role in the emergence of this system.
It will be valuable reading for advanced students, researchers and policymakers interested in modern economic history, industrial organization, political economy, European legal history and political science.
1. Introduction, Brian Shaev 2. Social Democracy and the Cartel-Question: The Case of the German SPD, Harm Schröter 3. Swedish Social Democracy and Cartels, 1911-1953, Birgit Karlsson 4. The German Trade Union Confederation and the Cartel Policy of the Early European Communities, Severin Cramm 5. “The Economy is our Destiny”: Socialists and the Birth of European Competition Law, 1950-1962, Brian Shaev 6. Ordering through Competition? Pieter VerLoren van Themaat and Social-Democratic Thinking about Competition in the early postwar Netherlands (1940s-1960s), Karen van Leeuwen 7. Social Democracy and the Foundations of European Competition Policy and Law (1950-1973), Sigfrido M. Ramírez Pérez 8. Finnish Social Democrats and Competition Policy: From the first “Cartel Law” to the Application of EU Membership, Susanna Fellman 9. European Social Democracy, Community Competition Law and Industrial Policy during the Crisis of the 1970’s and 1980’s, Dimitri Zurstrassen 9. The Impossible Social Democratic Competition Policy, 1985-2000, Laurent Warlouzet 10. Rules and Exceptions in the Recent History of Competition Law 2003-2017: Technocracy or Scope for a Social Democratic Perspective? Wolf Sauter 11. A Social Democratic Dilemma: Swedish Competition Policy in the 21st Century, John Lapidus 12. Conclusion, Vera Ŝcepanović and Brian Shaev
Brian Shaev is University Lecturer at the Institute for History at Leiden University, the Netherlands. Sigfrido M. Ramírez Pérez is Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History, Germany.
