Introduction The New Federalism

Abstract

AS the economic, industrial and social climate becomes seemingly more adverse, governments attempt to keep up with events by more interventions and innovations. Not least, they pursue radical proposals to alter the structures of government and of society. Yet the more governments intervene the more complex and costly they become, and the more remote from, and unacceptable to, the people. As the new structures of government proliferate, and their interventions multiply, there is a pressing need to comprehend in its totality what is going on; to conceptualise it in a framework of thought which will enable us to understand, and therefore to control, what is happening. We have given the name ‘The New Federalism’ to the framework which we describe.