Privatizing the welfare state: Danish libertarianism from the 1980s to the 2000s

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores the history of the Danish libertarian movement by analysing its ideological universe and networks, with a focus on Libertas, from the 1980s to the 2000s. To a large extent, the movement created its ideological universe and networks with resources drawn from American libertarianism that were adapted to and implemented in a Danish context. Over the course of two decades, Danish libertarians became prominent advocates of privatization with the aim of dismantling the welfare state and generated a wide reservoir of arguments for transforming the welfare state to a greater market-based organization through privatizing and marketizing its public sector. In four sections, the article illuminates the rise of the Danish libertarian movement in the context of a youth revolt from the right launched from within the Conservative Youth Party in the early 1980s and describes how a group of theoretically inclined and internationally oriented young conservatives pursued libertarian visions by contributing to political debates about privatization of the public sector and environmentalism in the 1980s and 1990s and finally how the libertarian movement in the 2000s moved closer to the established institutions of political power, while at the same time mushrooming into a plurality of smaller forums.