The Liberal Consensus Reconsidered

Robert Mason and Iwan Morgan have compiled an excellent series of essays on the concept of the “liberal consensus,” first introduced by Godfrey Hodgson in his 1976 book, America in Our Time, to describe the values that shaped America's political culture from the mid-1950s through the early 1960s. Many historians—myself included—have used Hodgson's idea to help illuminate the political culture of that time. Although Hodgson acknowledges that the liberal consensus described “moderate” rather than “liberal” politics, until this volume, written primarily by American historians who teach in Great Britain, the term itself had not been rigorously critiqued. The liberal consensus essentially describes a political culture built on the following shared assumptions: (1) American capitalism sought to use economic growth to steadily expand the middle class; (2) labor and management were willing to work in partnership with government to solve issues of social welfare; and (3) Americans were united in their determination to defeat their common enemy, the Soviet Union

Capitalism · Political culture · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Washington Consensus · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Law · Public Administration

• The Fiscal Revolution in America

  Open Access•James Hillyer•Journal of Policy History•2018

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