Conservadorismo reaganista

The economic piece has its own name: Reaganomics, also called Reaganism in part of the literature, a supply-side label. In 1981 the Economic Recovery Tax Act lowered marginal income-tax rates. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 lowered the top rate again and broadened the base, with the aim of not losing revenue. The path was not a single line of cuts: later bills gave back part of the 1981 relief. Deregulation continued a movement already underway in the 1970s. Inflation fell in large part under the Federal Reserve of Paul Volcker, appointed by Jimmy Carter and kept on by Reagan. The public debt grew, and Reagan called that growth the greatest disappointment of his presidency. In the 1980 primary, George H. W. Bush called the program voodoo economics.

The coalition is wider than the tax cut. Defense spending rose. The Strategic Defense Initiative, announced in 1983, and confrontation with the Soviet Union sit in the same presidency as the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, signed with Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987. In August 1981 Reagan fired the striking air-traffic controllers of PATCO. The social side drew in the religious right: family rhetoric and opposition to abortion in the presidential years, without a constitutional amendment that passed. Writers call the joining of market economics and traditionalism fusionism, after Frank Meyer. It is an American electoral coalition. It is not the catechism of one book.

The effects remain disputed. Defenders point to the end of stagflation and the growth that followed. Critics point to a wider income gap and the debt. This page does not close that account, and it does not turn the presidency into a model. The coalition is also a different claim from European conservatism of custom and institution, from neoliberalism as an economic doctrine shared with Margaret Thatcher, and from neoconservatism as a doctrine of promoting democracy abroad. Reagan appears in all three stories for different reasons. Appearing does not merge them.

Economy runs from Collectivize to Privatize, and Control from Planned to Laissez-faire. The program pulls toward Privatize and toward Laissez-faire: lower top tax rates, less rule over the firm, private property. The rise in military spending and the debt show that small state does not describe the whole budget. The test can show a market-leaning profile. It cannot show the disappointment over the debt, or the tax bills after 1981 that walked part of the cut back.

Culture runs from Progressive to Traditional. The appeal to the religious right sits toward Traditional, and that is what separates the coalition from a socially liberal neoliberalism. Military runs from Militarist to Pacifist. The defense buildup sits toward Militarist. The 1987 treaty is a negotiated limit, not pacifism. Intervention runs from Internationalist to Nationalist. An Atlantic alliance and an ideological confrontation do not, by themselves, fix one pole.

The match uses four axes and 38 positions from the open-source 12axes project. Conservadorismo reaganista is not among them. The Ronald Reagan page on this site is this catalog's editorial sketch of one person. It is not the definition of the coalition, and this page does not turn that sketch into the coalition's coordinate. The nearest published names are conservatism, neoliberalism, and neoconservatism. The charts below are their real positions.