TALKING POLITICS Talking Politics Guide to . . . the 1970s
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Jul 26, 2018 
Helen Thompson, political economist who studies international finance and generational politics, offers a lively guide to the 1970s. She examines when the decade truly began and why Nixon’s 1971 dollar move and the 1973 oil shock felt like awakenings. She traces UK crises, stagflation, the Volcker shift, Deng’s transformation, the Iranian revolution, and how those years reshaped global order.
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Oil Shock Made Global Economy Felt Locally
- The 1973 oil shock quadrupled oil prices and produced immediate social disruptions like strikes and the three‑day week in Britain.
- Ordinary people's lived experiences made the international economy painfully visible and politically consequential.
Seventies: Turbulent Decline And Democratic Renewal
- The mid‑1970s saw acute political instability with many Western democratic governments falling and widespread political violence.
- Simultaneously, democracy advanced in places like Spain and Greece while regimes elsewhere turned more repressive.
Stagflation Broke Conventional Economic Trade‑Offs
- Stagflation combined rising unemployment and inflation, undermining the Phillips curve trade‑off that many policymakers accepted.
- Oil price spikes explain much of the simultaneous inflation and joblessness in the 1970s.