ABSTRACT
Over the whole range of services, regulations were adjusted, leading to lower levels of expenditures. This makes it difficult to assess the effects of each targeting measure in the field of illness, unemployment, disability, and so on, separately. The victory of the allies in 1945 and the subsequent leadership of the United States created a long period of international stability. In this atmosphere optimism about the existence of individual and collective profitable strategies grew among Western people. Social and political stability is a fertile soil for progressive forces. The political parties continued the strategy of cost constraint, which was implemented through a series of reforms in social legislation. Economists discussed whether a Keynesian demand management was the desired policy reaction or a neoclassical policy of cost restraint. In the Netherlands the class straggle between the unions and the employers' organizations took place in a corporatistically structured arena.
