9 May 2023, 15h

!!! New Venue !!! (Universität Hauptgebäude):
University of Vienna, Universitätsring 1,  
BIG-Hörsaal Hauptgebäude, Tiefparterre Stiege 1 Hof 1 TP.80

Organizer: Priv. Doz. Dr. Peter Svik – Univ. Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Mueller

Poster

FRITZ BARTEL is an Assistant Professor of International Affairs at the George H.W. Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University.

Why did the Cold War come to a peaceful end? And why did neoliberal economics sweep across the world in the late twentieth century? In this pathbreaking study, Fritz Bartel argues that the answer to these questions is one and the same. The Cold War began as a competition between capitalist and communist governments to expand their social contracts as they raced to deliver their people a better life. But the economic shocks of the 1970s made promises of better living untenable on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Energy and financial markets placed immense pressure on governments to discipline their social contracts. Rather than make promises, political leaders were forced to break them. The Triumph of Broken Promises tells the story of how the pressure to break promises spurred the end of the Cold War and gave rise to the neoliberal global economy.