What is the anglo-saxon model?

Résumé du document

Essay sur le modèle anglo-saxon.



The model Anglo-Saxon is born simultaneously in Great Britain and in the USA in the 18th century. The GB is the first nation that is concerned with the Industrial Revolution. This nation, cut off in his little Island from one another, had had to search for new markets, for outlets.

Extraits

[...] The Anglo-Saxon model is obviously very complex and wide-ranging but it could be simplify in a few main ideas. Concerning the State, it has to be minimal faithfully to Adam Smith. The State has to intervene as an arbiter in the economy. Actually, the economy is understood as a market where meet offers and demanders. The law of offer and demand determines the prices and is considered as the best means to guarantee the (weighted) interests of the participants. These liberal theories forbid the State to distort concurrence with laws, norms, subventions etc. [...]

[...] For the one, in such a model the market tyranny rules the world and obliges workers to accept bad working conditions and low wages, in order to contempt the shareholders. For the others, it enlarges the gap of inequalities between the “insiders” and the “outsiders”. It's needless to say that less state has negative consequences, above all for the poorest. Even if the Anglo-Saxon model is said to be necessary to imitate, it's only an ideology that succeeded. There's no fatality, and the drifts it provokes that we can consider as unacceptable allow us to begin new reflections in order to propose alternative ways to the dominant model. [...]

[...] In what it consists? How is it exported all around the world? The model Anglo-Saxon is born simultaneously in Great Britain and in the USA in the 18th century. The GB is the first nation that is concerned with the Industrial Revolution. This nation, cut off in his little Island from one another, had had to search for new markets, for outlets. The colonization and the free trade were solutions, and a lot of theoreticians developed these ideas, these principles that are the first elements of the model. [...]

[...] The collective interest, the solidarity between citizens, trade unions are became old-fashioned. What's important today is the “competitiveness”. In such a system, inequalities are legion, but people live with the dream of possible social ascension. This system is often criticized because there's no project, no ideal for the nation. People group themselves together according to their religion, cultures, skin colour etc., which we qualify in France as “comunautarism”. q The success of the Anglo-Saxon model raises the question of the media it uses to export itself. [...]

[...] Before to study what are the specificities of this model, we have to give a definition of model”: the model is an ideal image that aims at giving an account of a complex reality. This is also an abstraction that simplify the reality, it's the very substance of a system (social, economical, political etc.), a syncretism of principles and values on which the society is based. We will insist more on the economical aspects, which is the heart of the model. To this point of view, the similarities between the US and British economies allowed us to speak about an Anglo-Saxon model. What are his birth and his history? [...]