THE POLITICAL DIMENSIONS OF ECONOMIC MANAGEMENT: A STUDY OF THE FORMULATION AND IMPLEMENTATION OF MACROECONOMIC POLICY IN GREAT BRITAIN FROM 1970 TO 1979

This is a study of the formulation and implementation of macroeconomic policy in Great Britain from 1970 to 1979. Its purpose is to explain why the British state adopted the macroeconomic policies that it did during the 1970s. Its central contention is that policy cannot be explained by reference to economic events alone. On the contrary, a series of political dimensions, associated with the organizational structures within which policy is made, were primary determinants of the kind of policies promulgated in Britain during this period. The subsidiary purpose of the dissertation is to account for the breakdown of the Keynesian consensus within the British policy establishment and to explain how monetarist doctrines rose to a position of influence within the British polity. It is shown that this process was driven primarily by political rather than economic factors. Evidence for these contentions is presented in a series of intensive case-studies of the process whereby the major monetary and fiscal policies of the decade were formulated. In the conclusion, five theoretical approaches to the characterization of the policy process are examined and their appropriateness for describing the policy process is assessed against the evidence from the preceding case-studies. The outlines of a new structural approach to the explanation of policy are presented along with its implications for current debates about public policy-making.