Recent plans for tax reforms, significant initiatives to create more flexible labor markets, and ongoing steps toward greater privatization in Europe and elsewhere underscore the extent to which views have changed in recent years. But it is clearly pragmatism, not ideology, that is the main driving force in these evolving views.
The structural policy adjustments in Western Europe and Japan, not to mention the efforts in China and Russia to move toward market capitalism, are being motivated, for the most part, by the evident ability of market competition to elevate living standards.