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  • 2023
  • Article
  • Business History

Let's Coordinate! The Reinforcement of a ‘Liberal Bastion’ within European Industrial Federations, 1978-1987

By: Sabine Pitteloud
  • Format:Print
  • | Pages:21
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Abstract

This article focuses on the establishment in the 1970s of a new international private governance forum, the so-called ‘Interlaken Conferences’, which gathered together the leading figures of the Industrial Federations of the Federal Republic of Germany, Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. It therefore contributes to the literature dealing with business interest associations’ (BIAs) international alliances, and to the growing corpus analysing BIAs’ political strategies in tackling the 1970s social unrest and economic crisis. Thanks to archival sources from the Swiss Federation of Commerce and Industry, this article examines the calculated efforts by Interlaken participants to secure a ‘liberal bastion’ of European industrial federations that could impose its views within other official international BIAs. By improving coordination, the participants sought to defend common liberal economic principles and to fight against adverse economic policies such as protectionism and state intervention in the economy.

Keywords

Business Interest Association; Lobbying; Neo-Liberalism; Neocorporatism; Coordination; Economic Policy; Business and Government Relations; Labor Unions; Economics; Policy; Europe

Citation

Pitteloud, Sabine. "Let's Coordinate! The Reinforcement of a ‘Liberal Bastion’ within European Industrial Federations, 1978-1987." Special Issue on Brokers of the wealthy (Transnational business associations) edited by Pierre Eichenberger, Neil Rollings and Janick Marina Schaufelbuehl. Business History 65, no. 2 (2023): 345–365.
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More from the Author
  • The Power and Limits of Expertise: Swiss–Swedish Linking of Vehicle Emission Standards in the 1970s and 1980s By: Mattias Näsman and Sabine Pitteloud
  • ‘American Management’ vs ‘Swiss Labour Peace’. The Closure of the Swiss Firestone Factory in 1978 By: Sabine Pitteloud
  • Capitalism and Global Governance in Business History: A Roundtable Discussion By: Sabine Pitteloud, Grace Ballor, Patricia Clavin, Nicolás M. Perrone, Neil Rollings and Quinn Slobodian
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