ABSTRACT
The 1988 presidential election season found the United States at the end of a highly unusual experiment. The Reagan administration had come to power in 1981 at the head of a conservative coalition which was radical in purpose and ambitious in design. The degree of its ideological commitment would perhaps have marked it out from other administrations. But it was also significant because it appeared to signal the end of one of those cycles of American politics which have fascinated historians charting the movement between conservatism and reform and between progress and reaction (Schlesinger Jr 1986). Using the language of A.D. Hirschman, America seemed to be ‘on the rebound’ from Democratic liberalism and that Reagan’s victory in 1980 could be represented as a fundamental shift from a public-sector orientation to a philosophy which celebrated the individual, the market and freedom from government restriction (Hirschman 1982).
