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"Why did America embrace consumer credit over the course of the twentieth century, when most other countries did not? How did American policy makers by the late twentieth century come to believe that more credit would make even poor families better off? This book traces the historical emergence of modern consumer lending in America and France. If Americans were profligate in their borrowing, the French were correspondingly frugal. Comparison of the two countries reveals that America's love affair with credit was not primarily the consequence of its culture of consumption, as many writers have observed, nor directly a consequences of its less generous welfare state. It emerged instead from evolving coalitions between fledgling consumer lenders seeking to make their business socially acceptable and a range of non-governmental groups working to promote public welfare, labor, and minority rights. In France, where a similar coalition did not emerge, consumer credit continued to be perceived as economically regressive and socially risky"--

Main description: Consumers feel powerless in the face of big industry, and the dominant view of economic regulators agrees with them. Trumbull argues that this represents a misreading of the historical record and the core logic of interest representation. Weak interests, he reveals, quite often emerge the victors in policy battles, by forging unlikely alliances.

Consumers feel powerless in the face of big industry, and the dominant view of economic regulators agrees with them. Trumbull argues that this represents a misreading of the historical record and the core logic of interest representation. Weak interests, he reveals, quite often emerge the victors in policy battles, by forging unlikely alliances.

"Based on a cross-national set of empirical case studies focused on the consumer, retail, credit, pharmaceutical, and agricultural sectors, Strength in Numbers develops an alternative model of interest representation. The central challenge in influencing public policy, Trumbull argues, is not organization but legitimation. How do diffuse consumer groups convince legislators that their aims are more legitimate than industry's? By forging unlikely alliances among the main actors in the process: activists, industry, and regulators. Trumbull explains how these "legitimacy coalitions" form around narratives that tie their agenda to a broader public interest, such as expanded access to goods or protection against harm. Successful legitimizing tactics explain why industry has been less powerful than is commonly thought in shaping agricultural policy in Europe and pharmaceutical policy in the United States. In both instances, weak interests carried the day."--Publisher's website

"Trumbull's findings help to clarify distinctive national approaches to recent product crises - including cases of BSE and genetically modified foods. His research suggests that, in the age of consumer capitalism, national competitiveness may hinge not only on endowments of labor and capital, but also on the institutional forms of national consumption."--Jacket

Research into the causes of the 2008 financial crisis has drawn attention to a link between growing income inequality in the United States and high household indebtedness. Most accounts trace the U.S. idea of credit-as-welfare to the period of wage stagnation and welfare retrenchment that began in the early 1970s. Using France as a comparison case, I argue that the link between credit and welfare was not unique to the United States. Indeed, U.S. charitable lending institutions that emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century were modeled in part on older French financial institutions. Three historical factors drove U.S. lenders and policymakers to push for expanded credit access for the working class. First, welfare reformers in the interwar period embraced private credit as an alternative to an expansive welfare state. Second, U.S. organized labor in the wake of World War II embraced credit access as a means to sustain industrial employment and finance strike actions. Third, commercial banks in the 1950s began offering revolving credit accounts as a means to attract new depositors at a time when banking regulation restricted the interest they could offer on deposits.

Digitised version produced by the EUI Library and made available online in 2020. ; Consumer protection appeared as a nell'area of policy in France and Germany in the 1970s. The regulatory approaches adopted by France and by Germany did not. however. emerge from deep national traditions of consumer protection. Indeed in many areas of consumer regulation such national traditions simply did not exist. Instead. the policy models that came to dominate in each country emerged from a heated political struggle that took place between producers and consumers in the 1970s and early 1980s over the identity of the consumer. At stake in this conflict was the degree of responsibility that consumers and producers faced for product-related risk.

Der Konflikt zwischen Freihandel und Verbraucherschutz hat in der wirtschaftspolitischen Diskussion zu Befürchtungen geführt, dass eine grössere Handelsöffnung den nationalen Verbraucherschutz unterminieren werde. Für dieses Risiko werden hauptsächlich zwei Gründe angeführt: zum einen können unilaterale und multilaterale Handelssanktionen die Autonomie von nationalen Regierungen in Frage stellen, geeignete Massnahmen zur Produktsicherheit zu entwickeln; zum anderen bestehen durch den Freihandel ökonomische Zwänge, einen regulatorischen Wettbewerb zu verfolgen, welcher die einzelnen nationalen Verbraucherschutzbestimmungen gefährdet. Der Autor vertritt demgegenüber die These, dass beide Marktmechanismen keine Gefahr für den Verbraucherschutz darstellen, da die Ausweitung des internationalen Handels den Verbraucherschutz in entwickelten Industrieländern eher vergrössert als verringert. Davon abgesehen ist eine weltweite Handelsliberalisierung ohne nationale Marktregulierungen, welche Standards für die Produktqualität, Produktsicherheit und Vergleichbarkeit setzen, politisch unhaltbar. (ICI)