So in the 1950s people turned back to capitalism.
Plus in World War 2 people saw really bad examples of government-controlled economies in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. While there were many programs to help the poor, the economy didn't really recover. Many socialist programs were enacted, government expanded, etc. Many blamed it - rightly or wrongly, I don't want to get into that here - on flaws in capitalism. Then in the 1930s the Great Depression hit. The economy was booming, there were plenty of jobs, the stock market was going up and up, etc. For a while it seemed like things were going great. And so it swings back and forth, like a pendulum.įor example, America in the 1920s embraced free market capitalism. So people react against that, they now see the advantages of the previous system, and society goes in the opposite direction.
But of course that turns out to be less than perfect also. And so they try some opposite extreme, thinking THIS is the real answer. So some time later people see the flaws and failures and reject the basic ideology. The "pendulum theory" is based on the idea that some ideology or belief system is adopted and put into effect with high hopes, the people who do it are convinced that this will create a new age of peace, prosperity, freedom, whatever. Then the next generation is conservative. In the same way, social forces and popular beliefs sometimes swing back and forth. The resulting scandal caused such mistrust in the American voter with the Republican Party, that when Gerald Ford who assumed the Presidency after Nixon's exit chose not to run, Americans elected a Democratic Governor from Georgia who had little recognition on a national stage.Ī pendulum swings back and forth, from far to the left to far to the right, from one extreme to the other. 1972 President elect Richard Nixon, had resigned and left office ahead of impeachment. The challenge is that the pendulum does not just return to center and stop, because of momentum, and the natural inclination to over correct, it continues the other direction until once again, it stops and goes back and so on.Ī further example of this was the 1976 Presidential election of a little known Georgia farmer named Jimmy Carter. A "Pendulum Swing" refers to the typically equal but opposite reaction to some event, organization, political party etc.įor example, when a particular political party in office performs poorly in the eyes of the voters, the "Pendulum Swing" represents the voters moving in the opposite direction in the next election in an attempt to regain center or rest in the condition of their country. The idiom refers to the inevitable return of the pendulum to center or rest, in doing so it moves past center in the other direction, only briefly reaching center or the point of rest.
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