[selecsosi]

It is fair to argue that the oil crisis acted as a catalyst rather than a root cause for dismantling elements of the social contract. The crisis illustrated vulnerabilities in the postwar economic order, provided a convenient pretext for shifting economic policies, and exposed a population that, for various reasons, was less unified and mobilized than in earlier decades.

While the ruling class had long-standing interests in undermining their “extracted duties” under the social contract, the oil crisis gave them a plausible narrative and a set of conditions that made such changes appear more justifiable and less resistible shifting the narrative from away from collective welfare solutions and toward individual responsibility and market-driven approaches.

I kind of view it as the oil crisis serving as a stress test that revealed the fraying unity and decreasing mobilization capacity of the general populace which occurred alongside broader cultural and political shifts in the 1970s that coincided with a decline in trust in institutions (partly due to events like the Vietnam War and Watergate).