ABSTRACT
The relatively broadly based political consensus during the phase of reconstruction, a period of hitherto rarely experienced long-term economic growth, and an undisputed enormous expansion of the welfare state in most liberal parliamentary industrial countries, particularly in Germany. It creates the appearance of a basically peaceable social structure, with a low incidence of conflict due to relative homogeneity, and with broad agreement on aims. The 'new radical conservatism' provided an important push in this direction, for this showed up the existence of fundamental alternatives for the development of the welfare state. The expansion of welfare state measures which occurred after the Second World War in practically all Western industrial countries was, in the view of the proponents of the 'new radical conservatism', only possible because of profound changes in the states' economic policies, based on Keynesian concepts.
