Abstract
Resounding generalisations come easily to historians attempting to divide time into periods and patterns. That forty years elapsed between the plans for a post-war settlement and the mid-1970s crisis does not mean that the settlement itself is dead. Like the experience of the Second World War it may have value as a talisman or stereotype for use in public political life. But many, of its leading characteristics, landmarks of that period, have been relegated or obliterated. Unemployment and income disparity have returned to 1920s levels; a Treasury regime dominates government practice and economic values infuse all public debate; competition and conflict have replaced bargaining for consent. Government, having deliberately weakened the state’s hold over most markets, finds that it has begun to lose control of public economic behaviour.
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Notes
Cf. B. Elbaum and W. Lazonick (eds) The Decline of the British Economy (1983) particularly Peter Hall’s essay ‘The Role of the State’.
S. Pollard, The Wasting of the British Economy (1982) pp. 71–3.
Harold Perkin, The Rise of Professional Society (1989) Chap. 10.
L. T. Hobhouse, The Metaphysical Theory of the State (1918) p. 14.
Cf. Eric Nordlinger, On the Autonomy of the Democratic State (1981) chap. 5.
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© 1991 Keith Middlemas
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Middlemas, K. (1991). The Modern State. In: Power, Competition and the State. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230379893_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230379893_12
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
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