A NEOKONZERVATÍV ÁLLAM, THATCHERTŐL CAMERONIG
THE NEOCONSERVATIVE STATE FROM THATCHER TO CAMERON

Summary/Abstract: The issues raised by the last twenty-five years for the role of the state are profound and complex. The welfare state in Britain had reached its zenith in the post-war years and by the end of the seventies the interruption of economic growth and the emergence of new challenges led to a deep crisis about the affordability and desirability of the welfare state. In response, the neoconservatives under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher considered it their top priority to dismantle the social-democratic state and to put an end to the corporatist experiment. However, the neoliberal economic policy pursued during the eighteen years of the Conservative governments failed to produce the results that had been expected by the ideologues of the New Right. The Thatcher and Major governments simply could not scale down the state to the level regarded by them as optimal. The New Labour under Blair offered a slight change of direction but it did not discard the neoliberal approach to the economy. The major aim of the British state has come to be accommodation to globalization; this version of the state is characterized by the author as the ”competition state”. David Cameron, trying to renew Conservative politics introduced the concept of ”compassionate conservatism”, which stressed the importance of mending Britain’s ”broken society”. Therefore the neoliberal dimension of the Cameronite com petition state is likely to be tempered by the recognition that Thatcherism failed to provide for a balanced social and economic development.

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