After the 1960s, many African Americans and other minority communities as well as women were denied equal opportunities in housing, education and other areas. Many Americans faced unequal economic opportunities and jobs were not distributed adequately to the entire populace (Gourevitch, 163). Unemployment rates were high and economic recessions were regular and highly destructive to the people in the lower social classes (Gourevitch, 163). The cold war in Europe led to economic difficulties as there was free flow of trade between communist Western Europe countries and capitalist Eastern Europe countries.
The McCracken Report as mentioned by Goldthorpe states that the cause of these problems varied from the World War II to the emergence of civil rights movements and the Cold War. The World War II weakened many industrial democracies and the after math of the war led many economies to decline through the 1950s (Gourevitch, 165). Countries were constantly shifting their allegiance as they sought to establish themselves as the new world powers. Some countries such as Britain, Belgium, France, Italy, Netherlands and many others that had colonies had had their economies weighed down by the weight of supporting colonies abroad. The United States was not plagued by the issue of supporting colonies as it had none abroad but it faced deep inequality and segregation within itself.
Cameron explained that the openness of economies in the 1960s was a precursor in the prediction of the increase in the OECD government tax revenue which greatly impacted the economies up to 1975 (Gourevitch, 185). Cameron stated that economies that are more open have higher rates of industrial growth, higher unionization, greater bargaining power and string labor movements.
Keohane states that some of the independent variables that led to the failure of embedded liberalism in the 1970s and 1980s were lack of openness by countries in economic and political dealings. The politics of international security as well as the effects of the cold war undermined liberalism in the 1970s and 1980s ((Gourevitch, 188). Keohane noted that democratic politics being propagated by the democratic economies needed to adjust to the capitalistic and not the vice versa.
John Ruggie argued that the changes in international economic regimes through the 1970s were norm governed changes. He states that the changes did not have an impact on the basic principles that had been established in the 1940s. The access to balance-of-payments financing ought to be conditioned on the behaviors of the borrowing countries (Gourevitch, 187). There ought to have been distinct differences between orthodox and embedded liberalism. For instance, embedded liberalism calls for state action in the containment of economic and social dislocations generated from the markets. Orthodox liberalism on the other hand calls for increased scope of the market.
Works cited
Gourevitch, Peter A. Politics in Hard Times: Comparative Responses to International Economic Crises. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986. Print.
