Neo-liberalism, Political Leadership and Civil Society: The Case Study of Thatcherism

The so-called “Thatcherism” provides us an interesting case study to investigate the relation between Neoliberalism, political authority and civil society from the prospective of political philosophy and political science. This investigation is based on the idea that Thatcherism was not only, or mainly, an attempt to change the economic structure of the United Kingdom, but it was also a project to change the values, the political culture and the society as a whole, and economic reforms were used in order to reach that aim. This intention was clear in the words of Margaret Thatcher herself, who in a famous interview in 1981 said “Economics are the method; the object is to change the heart and soul” of the country. Some of the issues that can be explored trough Thatcherism are: the relationship between a charismatic political leader and the people, the possibility/opportunity to use a political leadership in order to change the dominant moral values in a society, and the related risk of populist authoritarianism. To work on Thatcherism from the perspective of political philosophy means on one hand to study the role of ideas in a process of political change, and on the other hand to study the role of a charismatic leadership in a process of cultural change. The first aspect involves the issue of the role of economic development as sources to legitimate the political power, while the second involve the issue of the role of myths and of the risk of populism in a process of reforms realized by a charismatic leadership. In this regard it is interesting to observe that one of the peculiarity of Thatcherism is that it was an attempt to conquer not only the consent of the élites, but also the consent of the whole society in favour of capitalism and free market. Furthermore, the outcome of our analysis will show several paradoxes that we face observing the historical experience of Thatcherism with the lenses of the political theories of Liberalism and Conservatism, which were the references of Mrs Thatcher, and these paradoxes could lead us to a better understanding of Thatcherism as an attempt to use the political power in order to induce cultural changes in the society.