quarter of the 20th century. There have always been many regulated industries,
even in the most ideologicallylaissez-fairecapitalist economies like that of
the USA. Governments have tended to regulate the number of firms in certain
economic areas, or at least the conditions for entry and have even more
frequently controlled their activities. Such regulation has stemmed from a fear
that uncontrolled competition would be against the public interest and has
often proved popular with firms inside regulated zones, owing to reduced
competitive pressures. Thus transport, both by air and long-distance coach
companies, has frequently been regulated. Routes could not be operated
without licences, and the number of companies allowed to compete on a
route has usually been restricted. Largely as a part of the return to popularity of
free market economic theory from the 1970s onwards, governments have
removed or reduced such regulations. The hope has always been that competi-
tion would turn out to be safe and produce lower fares, tariffs or other changes
without notable reductions in quality of service.
As many of the most regulated areas were also controlled by state mono-
polies, particularly in energy production and communications, the first step
was in fact privatization. However, governments could not allow private
monopolies to take the place of state monopolies, so the introduction of
competition has gone hand in hand with deregulation. There have been some
notable disasters of deregulation, particularly the savings and loan services in
the USA in the 1980s. It is perhaps surprising that there have not been more,
because the instinct to regulate such areas was well based in fears for the public
interest. Other areas though, especially France’s deregulation of the broadcast
media, or the United Kingdom’s deregulation of inter-city coach services
should clearly never have been subject to regulation in the first place.
De ́tente
From the 1960s the word ‘de ́tente’ crept into our political vocabulary to signify
a foreign policy process mainly concerned with an easing of tension between
the Soviet Union and the USA. At any particular time the content of policies
meant to increase de ́tente varied widely. Very roughly, any policy which
involves self-interested economic co-operation, or steps towards reduction
in the level of armaments, is likely to qualify as an example of de ́tente. In many
ways the apparent existence of a new and softer relationship between the two
superpowershad more to do with a tendency to use the extreme hostility of
thecold warof periods in the 1950s and 1960s as a benchmark than with any
real reduction in conflict between Western and Eastern states. Most historians
would suggest that the process of de ́tente after 1945 has been cyclical, and that
the period which first produced the label, during the Nixon and Carter US
De ́tente