Book Department
Abstract
Book Department SAGE Publications, Inc.1988DOI: 10.1177/000271628849900113 INTERNA TIONAL RELA TIONS AND POLITICS GREEN, DAVID G. The New Conservatism: The Counterrevolution in Political, Economic, and Social Thought. Pp. xi, 238. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987. $32.50. RAYACK, ELTON. Not So Free to Choose: The Political Economy of Milton Friedman and Ronald Reagan. Pp. xi, 215. New York: Praeger, 1986. $37.95. Green and Rayack present contrasting views of the new conservatism purportedly at the base of Thatcherism and Reaganism. Both agree that these political leaders have at points significantly deviated from the prescriptions of contemporary conservative thought; they disagree in their assessments of the soundness of this theory and of the consequences of policy deviation. David Green's New Conservatism: The Counterrevolution in Political, Economic, and Social Thought represents a sympathetic treatment of the major strands of new conservatism and its impact upon social and economic policy. Green, a research fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs, a conservative think tank, describes the linkages between new conservatism and eighteenth-century liberalism, Nozick minimalism, Friedman monetarism, the public-choice school, and the works of Friedrich Hayek. To debates that often- produce more heat than light Green adds clarity and informed advocacy. Not only