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Let's Coordinate! The Reinforcement of a ‘Liberal Bastion’ within European Industrial Federations, 1978-1987
By: Sabine Pitteloud
Abstract
This article focuses on the establishment in the 1970s of a new international private governance forum, the so-called ‘Interlaken Conferences’, which gathered together the leading figures of the Industrial Federations of the Federal Republic of Germany, Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. It therefore contributes to the literature dealing with business interest associations’ (BIAs) international alliances, and to the growing corpus analysing BIAs’ political strategies in tackling the 1970s social unrest and economic crisis. Thanks to archival sources from the Swiss Federation of Commerce and Industry, this article examines the calculated efforts by Interlaken participants to secure a ‘liberal bastion’ of European industrial federations that could impose its views within other official international BIAs. By improving coordination, the participants sought to defend common liberal economic principles and to fight against adverse economic policies such as protectionism and state intervention in the economy.
Keywords
Business Interest Association; Lobbying; Neo-Liberalism; Neocorporatism; Coordination; Economic Policy; Business and Government Relations; Labor Unions; Economics; Policy
Citation
Pitteloud, Sabine. "Let's Coordinate! The Reinforcement of a ‘Liberal Bastion’ within European Industrial Federations, 1978-1987." Business History (forthcoming). (Pre-published online April 27, 2021.)