Danish Design or British Disease?: Danish Economic Crisis Policy 1974-1979 in Comparative Perspective

The author charts the response of successive Danish governments to the onset of the economic crisis of the 1970s, comparing it with British crisis policy over the same period. Where the Conservative government of Britain broke completely with the policy of their Labour predecessors, both Liberal and Social Democratic governments in Denmark clung to the Keynesian policy of using public spending to counteract the domestic effects of the international recession. The author argues that both policies were ultimately unsuccessful: the Danish design welfare model broke down in the face of mounting foreign debts, while Thatcherite monetarism succeeded in enriching the financial sector, dealing with the symptoms but not the causes of the British Disease : low industrial productivity, poor quality control and insufficient attention to staff training.