Using recently released papers, we analyze an attempted neoliberal policy revolution in 1980s Britain—the attempt to restrict the state pension to a minimal flat-rate benefit and supplement it with personal pensions. In the process, the government would abolish both the state earnings-related pension and collective employer-provided occupational pension schemes that then covered about half the workforce and owned about a quarter of all shares listed on the London Stock Exchange. Unusually, our focus is not primarily on ministers, as we unpick an attempted revolution that would have refashioned every worker in Britain as an investor-capitalist. Rather we focus on a sub-ministerial center of political power, the No. 10 Policy Unit, and the influence on it of the Centre for Policy Studies, a right-wing think tank. In doing so, we confirm the latter's importance as source of neoliberal ideas for the architects of policy change in the 1980s and reveal the centrality of the Policy Unit as a source of motive power for Britain's neoliberal revolution. We also, however, highlight the relative pragmatism of ministers as they backed away from the Policy Unit's attempted revolution, choosing instead to implement a more evolutionary set of reforms.

中文翻译：

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撒切尔的政策组和“新自由主义愿景”

我们使用最近发布的论文，分析了 1980 年代英国的新自由主义政策革命尝试——试图将国家养老金限制在最低限度的统一费率福利，并以个人养老金作为补充。在此过程中，政府将废除与国家收入相关的养老金和集体雇主提供的职业养老金计划，这些计划当时覆盖了大约一半的劳动力，并拥有伦敦证券交易所所有上市股票的约四分之一。不同寻常的是，我们的重点并不主要放在部长身上，因为我们取消了一场试图将英国的每个工人重塑为投资者资本家的革命。相反，我们关注的是一个次级政治权力中心，即第 10 号政策组，以及右翼智囊团政策研究中心对其的影响。在这样做，我们确认了后者作为 1980 年代政策变革设计师的新自由主义思想来源的重要性，并揭示了政策单位作为英国新自由主义革命动力来源的中心地位。然而，我们也强调了部长们的相对实用主义，因为他们放弃了政策部门的革命尝试，而是选择实施一套更具渐进性的改革。