ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the economic and political crises that arose in the 1970s and the reasons why post-war embedded capitalism came to an end. It argues that this upheaval was not the consequence of excessive state regulation and intervention. Rather, the 1970s were marked by economic crisis because prevailing regulations were weakened by changes in the global balance of power and in the economic structures of developed capitalist economies. The second part of the chapter explains how new pro-market institutions were established in the 1980s and 1990s under the pervasive influence of neoliberal ideas. The consequence of this new institutional framework is that the prices of the means of production were no longer politically regulated but came under the ambit of competitive markets.
