ABSTRACT
Countries throughout Europe and across the political spectrum began to embrace the idea that markets could be not just the most effective allocator of resources but also engaged with for a more 'realistic' and 'pragmatic' social democratic platform. The post-fordist approach to production includes the adoption of total quality management techniques, "just-in-time" production, flexible manufacturing systems, and vendor certification. On the theoretical front, the reconstruction of neo-liberalism provided a rigorous, defendable intellectual justification for limiting the intervention role of governments. It provided a powerful intellectual barrier to reverse progress toward concerted economic policy-making and, by emphasising individualism, effectively eroded the case for the stakeholder economy. Those in closest proximity to the criteria have maintained a tight fiscal stance for many years and those who have previously diverged rather more from the targets due to the adoption of less stringent and painful fiscal policy have had to compensate for this in the last few years with an even harder fiscal contraction.
