Special report | Business and the state
Governments’ widespread new fondness for interventionism
After a long liberalising era, the state has bounced back. That is not a good thing, argues Jan Piotrowski
AS WITH ALL history, capitalism’s may not repeat but it does rhyme. Periods of freer enterprise give way to ones with a more meddlesome state. When change comes, it is after crisis, occasionally exogenous (war, pandemic), at other times provoked by excesses (financial crash, depression, stagflation). Yet the metre is irregular in time and space, differing from decade to decade and country to country.
This article appeared in the Special report section of the print edition under the headline “The new interventionism”
From the January 15th 2022 edition
Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents
Explore the edition