to full employment, however, had been displaced, in favor of a
stronger stance against inflation and public deficits, and a clear pref-
erence for market mechanisms. More generally, the public policies
of the 1980s and 1990s privileged privatization, deregulation, lower
taxes, and a leaner state, usually in the name of international com-
petitiveness. The term neoliberalism was used to encompass these
different dimensions, and to underline the novel character of this
policy package, even though politicians and experts on the right often
disapproved of the label.
Consider, for instance, the fate of the civil service. Historically, the
right has always distrusted state intervention and bureaucracy, and
favored modest governments. The neoliberal movement of the 1980s
and 1990s prolonged but also renewed this perspective, by advocating
not only a leaner state, but also a government that would be run like a
business. Some functions would be abandoned, others would be pri-
vatized or contracted out, assets would be sold, and employees would
be released. Canada’s conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney,
for instance, promised to give “pink slips and running shoes to
bureaucrats.”^42 What remained of the public service would find its
inspiration from the private sector, public administration being
reinvented as public management. Citizens would become “clients”
and public services would be autonomous, empowered, and efficient.
The new “public managers” would focus more on results than on
rules and process. Many years later, it remained unclear how suc-
cessful this movement really was in transforming complex public
administrations primarily designed to be accountable to authorities,
but the “new public management” certainly defined the debate for
over two decades.^43
The turn toward markets was general. Financial institutions were
deregulated, industrial policies were practically abandoned, and labor
market rules and institutions were made more “flexible.” When it
came to the welfare state, however, the right faced stronger resistance.
For conservatives, generous social programs created four basic prob-
lems. First, they pushed taxes up and discouraged investments. Second,
(^42) Donald J. Savoie,Thatcher, Reagan, Mulroney: In Search of a New
Bureaucracy, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994, p. 4.
(^43) Ibid., pp. 172–99 and 256–72; Geert Bouckaert, “Modernising Government:
The Way Forward – A Comment,”International Review of Administrative
Sciences, vol. 72, no. 3, 2006, 327–32.
148 Left and Right in Global Politics