Introduction

Abstract

The 1980s were characterised by the retreat of the state. Privatisation and deregulation in Britain was part of a global trend, eclipsed in significance by the collapse of the old Communist states in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The old orthodoxy of the mixed economy, and speculation about the benefits of a planned economy, collapsed in the face of a widespread acceptance of the supremacy of the market mechanism as the only sound basis for an economy.