Privatizing Britain and Germany in Unifying Europe, 1979-1999

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Dirk van Laak
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 504240749

Precisely how do industries and states interact to structure markets? Close empirical attention to the form of economic policymaking known since the early 1980s as privatization offers new perspectives on the question of how governments and businesses related to one another during the last two decades of the twentieth century—and beyond. Based on newly declassified archival collections, this project seeks to force a rethink of privatization. It does so by linking regional and national processes of deindustrialization in late-twentieth century Britain and Germany to international moves to redesign economies. The period covers the aftermath of the deep recessions of the 1970s, the creation of more flexible financial markets in the 1980s, and the struggles to embed east-central European industries in an expanding European Community/Union during the 1990s. The proposed book project analyzes how ideas about reordering state enterprises circulated between Britain, Germany, the political institutions of the EC/EU, notably the European Commission, as well as the United States. Understanding how privatization unfolded in overlapping contexts—within individual countries like Britain and (West) Germany, as well as in bilateral relations and the supranational bodies of the EC/EU—requires detailed scrutiny of specific cases. Via archives-based study of market upheaval in specific regions of Europe with strong ties to international markets, the project offers an actor-based, multinational investigation of Anglo-American finance’s growing reach into (West) Germany’s political economy.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants