The Social Construction of the Great Depression: Industrial Policy during the 1930s in the United States, Britain, and France

The Great Depression of the 1930s occasioned radical new public policy experiments throughout the West as nations abandoned orthodoxy in the hope of reversing the economic decline. Here, an examination of the domestic industrial recovery strategies of the US, GB, & France is used to argue that the economic downturn served to falsify institutionalized notions of the means to economic growth, causing nations to reverse their traditional growth policies. Thus, the US fostered cartelization, GB tried to coerce mergers of small producers, & France practiced laissez faire. The depression provides important evidence of the role of institutionalized meaning in modern policy making. AA