`Most comparative research on public expenditure retrenchment has concentrated on the welfare state. This exciting and innovative volume takes a new approach. It focuses instead on non-social programmes such as education, defence and economic...
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`Most comparative research on public expenditure retrenchment has concentrated on the welfare state. This exciting and innovative volume takes a new approach. It focuses instead on non-social programmes such as education, defence and economic affairs, demonstrates that this is where the real cost-cutting has taken place and shows, paradoxically, that these cuts have made social spending more politically salient in the public expenditure calculus. This is a book which extends the reach of our understanding of modern public policy at the same time as it extends our knowledge of the reach of the
Revisions of papers presented at a workshop held Mar. 2006 in Delmenhorst, Germany
Electronic reproduction; Available via World Wide Web
COPYRIGHT; Contents; Contributors; Preface and acknowledgements; 1. Introduction; 2. Testing the retrenchment hypothesis: an aggregate overview; 3. Data on the functions of government: where are we now?; 4. The changing cost of government: trends in the state overhead budget; 5. Sinking budgets and ballooning prices: recent developments connected to military spending; 6. Expenditure on public order and safety; 7. Testing the retrenchment hypothesis: educational spending, 1960-2002; 8. The real race to the bottom: what happened to economic affairs expenditure after 1980?
9. A mortgage on the future? Public debt expenditure and its determinants, 1980-200110. Moving beyond expenditure accounts: the changing contours of the regulatory state, 1980-2003; Index
