Professional Affiliation

Ph.D Candidate, University of Geneva, Switzerland

Expert Bio

Samuel Beroud is a Research Assistant at the Graduate Institute, Geneva and a PhD candidate at the University of Geneva. His research focuses on the transformation of international economic governance in the 1970s and early 1980s, and in particular on the Group of Seven (G7). He graduated from the University of Lausanne in 2011 and was a visiting student at Columbia Univesity in 2012 and Sciences Po, Paris in 2013-2014.

Wilson Center Project

“Crisis as Opportunity? Western Economic Relations and the Resurgence of American Hegemony, 1969 – 1989.” ; "The Post-Oil Shock Economic Stabilization of Europe, 1975-1977: New Realism rather than Neoliberalism?"

Project Summary

This research examines the coordinated efforts of the American and German governments to economically and politically stabilize Western Europe after the first oil shock and the economic crisis of 1974-1975. It will specifically show how these countries used conditional credits to stabilize the economy in Italy (1974-1976), the United Kingdom (1976) and Portugal (1977). While austerity policies associated to these credits are usually described as signaling a rising “neoliberal” ideology, this research should show that the US and Germany acted pragmatically to protect their own economic and geopolitical interests. Their overarching objective was to defeat leftist alternatives that could destabilize NATO from within: the left wing of the Labour Party in the UK and Eurocommunism in Italy and Portugal.

Previous Terms

Former Swiss Scholar