The Williamsburg Consensus: The Reagan Administration as Promoter of Neoliberalism in Western Europe, 1981–1989

Abstract

Situating the rise of neoliberalism in Western Europe within a broader Atlantic context, this article examines how the Reagan administration promoted economic liberalisation across the European Community (EC) and how European governments responded to and used US pressure to shape the trajectory of European integration throughout the 1980s. Drawing on newly available material from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, from British, French and German archives and the records of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), it argues that Washington deployed multiple strategies to advance market-oriented reforms in Europe – from public relations campaigns and diplomatic support for like-minded politicians to the strategic use of the Group of Seven, the OECD and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, as well as bilateral threats and trade skirmishes. The article shows that transatlantic tensions over trade and macroeconomic policy were not simply signs of discord but also an instrument through which Washington sought to influence European integration. In turn, conservative forces within the EC, most notably the British government, used US pressure to advance their own neoliberal agenda against French resistance. This interaction between external American pressure and internal European political dynamics produced what this article calls the Williamsburg Consensus: the transformation of neoliberalism from contested national experiments into institutionalised transatlantic orthodoxy.