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X-ORIGINAL-URL:https://www.historikertag.de/Muenchen2021/en/sektionen/competitiveness-debates-from-british-imperialism-to-american-globalization-studies-on-british-american-and-german-declinism/
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SUMMARY:[Historikertag 2021] Competitiveness Debates from British Imperialism to American Globalization: Studies on British, American and German Declinism
DESCRIPTION:The panel historicizes competitiveness as a contested concept that has been used since early modern times to establish hierarchies among states and to set political priorities. Such conflicts had real political consequences because national security, sovereignty, reputation, and wealth were at stake. The panel puts into conversation intellectual history, historical semantics, and discourse analysis, and it relates to discussions in contemporary history about (in-)security “after the boom” and about neoliberalism.
Competition in global markets is not, as is sometimes proposed, a genuine neoliberal ideal. The idea of a world in which states compete for market share is a European product of early modern times. The relationship between discourses about competitiveness, national security, and “greatness” is much more complex than supposed dichotomies of a post-Trump and post-Brexit analysis would suggest, i.e. dichotomies such as “nationalistic-protectionist states versus open global markets.” Free markets, too, were a tool of national power politics.
What actors demanded national competitiveness and why did they do so? What competitor did these actors consider a threat, what remedy did they propose, and who prevailed? The discourse about competitiveness was a symptom of a national and/or imperial angst, a fear of decline, as well as of ambitions: At the very moment the British Empire appeared to particularly powerful, the debate about Ireland shifted from questions of imperial governance to Irish competitiveness, first as a threat, then as a bonus for Britain. After the Union of 1801, however, political economists warned of a downward spiral of immiseration through Irish workers. In the 1980s and 90s, U.S. elites were deeply worried about “economic security” and the loss of American world leadership. And after German unification, the end of the Cold War, and the implementation of the European Common Market, Germans became concerned about their ‘Standort.’
Der Beitrag Competitiveness Debates from British Imperialism to American Globalization: Studies on British, American and German Declinism erschien zuerst auf Historikertag 2021.
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