The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (173 page)

 
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An economic doctrine which argues that changes in the supply of money in an economy cause changes in the general price level. Coupled with this is a stress on minimal economic intervention by government and an emphasis on the free play of market forces. The term was first coined by Karl Brunner in 1968 but its antecedents can be traced back to the quantity theory of money developed in the writings of classical theorists such as
Locke
and
Hume
. It was through the work of Milton Friedman , beginning in the 1950s, that the quantity theory was revived. Friedman and his associates, the so-called Chicago School of economists, argued that control of inflation could only be successful through restrictions in the growth of the money supply. By the 1970s these arguments found political succour due to the emergence of high levels of inflation and unemployment which suggested the breakdown of Keynesian demand management policies. Hence, within Britain the Labour government adopted control of the money supply as an economic objective from 1976. The Conservative administration under Margaret Thatcher in 1979 continued this process although an emphasis on the free market was also fervently pursued. Strict control of the money supply had largely been abandoned by the mid-1980s. Despite this an emphasis on the free market and the importance of controlling inflation still pervades Conservative rhetoric.
IF 

 
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Economic policy which centres on the control of the demand for, and supply of, money as a means of controlling the economy. The main tool of monetary policy is the level of interest, essentially the price of money, which a government can influence through its debt financing activities on the open market. During the 1980s, monetary policy became the central economic instrument used by the governments of the United States and Britain, in the belief that the control of inflation was the key to stable economic growth, and the level of inflation was determined by the growth in the money supply. However, the money supply proved very difficult to control (and even to measure), and interest rates a rather blunt economic tool, and a less dogmatically monetarist stance was assumed.

 
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(1888–1979)
Jean Monnet is best known for developing French postwar indicative planning and the ‘functionalist’ Schumann Plan which led to the 1952 treaty establishing the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). Despite the 1954 failure of Monnet's other brainchild, the European Defence Community, the ECSC provided the impetus for the more thoroughgoing European integration of the Treaty of
Rome
(1957), with Monnet once again playing an active part. As such, Monnet is regarded as the ‘father of Europe’.
GU 

 
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Of a line or function, the property that it either never decreases or never increases. Specifically, of an electoral or apportionment system, that a unit (e.g. a party or a state) never loses seats as it gains population or vote share. This property is violated by the greatest remainder rule ( see
Hamilton
), and by
single transferable vote
.

 
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Originally promulgated by United States President James Monroe in 1823 as a warning to European powers that any expansionist activity by them anywhere in the Americas would be construed as a threat to the United States. Extended by Theodore Roosevelt and repeatedly used to justify US intervention in the affairs of Latin American countries.
DM 

 
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