Planning and Politics in Western Europe

Abstract

Between the end of the Second World War and about 1970 the world looked to the countries of Western Europe for successful examples of the operation of the mixed economy. Few disputed that governments should intervene both to harness the worst excesses of the free market and to provide a minimum of welfare provision below which no citizen should be allowed to fall. The nature and level of intervention varied from country to country, but everywhere government expenditure increased and the range and quality of central and local government services improved. In retrospect, this burgeoning state role occurred in a remarkably atheoretical context. The two main influences on governments — Keynesian economics and social democratic politics — provided the broad direction in which policy should move, but little guidance on detail or, indeed, on where the government role should begin and end. Keynesianism, for example, required governments to pull broad macro-economic levers to sustain a high level of employment and economic activity in the economy. Enhanced government expenditure would be used to stimulate demand and create jobs.