Book Review: The State under Stress
| Author | Grant Jordan |
| Published date | 01 March 1997 |
| Date | 01 March 1997 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/014473949701700106 |
| Published By | Sage Publications, Inc. |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
Teaching Public Administration, Spring 1997,
Vol.
XV/L No.1,
pp
79
-84
THE
STATE
UNDER
STRESS
C. D. Foster and F. Plowden
Book Reviews
(Open University Press, 1996, pp 261, £16.99 pbk)
The book reinforces the new conventional wisdom that the years
of
Conservative rule did not deliver the advertised goods, in the sense that public
expenditure was not reduced and that the dominant motif was that
of
centralisation -whatever the rhetoric to the contrary.
If
anything, the five
'scene setting' tables in Chapter One are over-friendly to Conservative
Administrations in that they present spending
as
a percentage
of
GDP.
This is
an easier target than that
of
reducing public spending
per
se -even though this
smaller target also proved impossible. The authors note in passing the
importance
of
moving the uprating
of
benefits from
an
earnings comparison to
a comparison with retail prices.
It
seemed a minor enough looking change at
the time but the cumulative impact is now important and is an area for real
reductions over what was previously in train.
The authors range widely in their discussion, from Mill to the Millennium
Commission, and there are plenty
of
references to be chased up -for example,
topics such as the
US
public choice approach -though the role
of
the literature
may be to give intellectual window dressing to pragmatic and under-argued
changes. Perhaps the authors do not give enough weight to the improvised
nature
of
decision making on these matters. Undoubtedly their main
contribution is in the central chapters on privatisation (which they favour) and
agencies (of which they are rightly more suspicious).
Students should certainly read this practice-based perspective -not because the
message is very different from that conveyed in other texts but because the
same conclusion emerges from different experiences. For example, Foster and
Plowden argue that 'Separation raises more complicated issues than is often
recognised
if
efficiency is to be combined with the safeguards consumers and
good government need.' They note 'localised agencies are unlikely to be as
capable as elected local authorities
of
reflecting local interests.' They observe,
'the main vehicle
for
introducing competition was the government's market
79
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