abstract

This paper explores the international economic and representative democratic determinants of production market policies, which has been showing a very similar trend among OECD countries since the 1980s. The originality of this paper lies in its incorporation of economic recessions and partisan preferences as critical causes. This paper finds that most countries undertook structural reforms in order to revive the economy and boost trade without disrupting monetary stability in a volatile international context, although some governments undertook the reforms as a domestic response to a banking crisis. This finding combined with the discovery that a right legislative median rather than the inauguration of a rightist government promotes structural reforms casts doubts on the interpretations that claim structural reforms are a creature of governments representing international trade interests or staunchly devoted to market fundamentalism.