LSE Panel discussion: Postwar transformations of capitalism and democracy

The full title is: "Governing growth: the postwar transformations of capitalism and democracy" This event is part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science 2026, taking place from 17 October to 7 November with events across the UK.

Please register for your free entrance ticket QR code (Meetup attendance fee of £3 applies), they are asking a couple of questions: https://www.lse.ac.uk/events/governing-growth

The LSE offer lectures that are open to the public (attendance fee applies) on a variety of subjects. Let's meet outside Holborn tube station, opposite the main entrance, on Kingsway, next to the hat stall/tree. We will walk down together at 6.10pm.

"How do capitalist economies change over time? And what political consequences follow?

In his new book, Governing Growth, which he will discuss at this event, Peter Hall traces the interactions between politics and economics in Western democracies over the past eighty years, identifying a series of profound shifts in the political economies of Europe and the United States. Hall develops the concept of successive growth regimes, each the result of public policies interacting with the strategies of private firms. Alongside each growth regime, he argues, there is a distinctive representation regime, which determines whose voices have the most influence over public policy. Showing how these two regimes interact, he develops a new account of the processes through which political economies change over time. Hall outlines three postwar growth regimes: an era of modernization, from 1945 to about 1975; an era of liberalisation, from 1980 to the late 1990s; and an era of knowledge-based growth, beginning at the turn of the century. His sweeping analysis sheds new light not only on the relationship between capitalism and democracy, but also on the roots of our contemporary political dilemmas"

I attended a number of LSE lectures and found most of them very interesting. I always learn something. And the best bit is to go for a quick drink afterwards to compare notes on what we thought, and even more importantly to catch up