ABSTRACT
Since the 1980s, practically all governments have revised their economies and policies in line with international competitive standards and have implemented institutional reforms when international competition has endangered macroeconomic stability. The Keynesian State (KS), created after 1945, was transformed according to the new criteria of individualism, market principles and free choice. After the 1960s, the state-socialist countries lost their international competitiveness, resulting in loan-based modernization programmes, enmeshing them in debt. With the internationalization of capital and production, and the globalization of the means of communication, all economic regimes were exposed to competitive forces, integrating them into a new economic and political world order.
