Premium
Root and Branch Restructuring to Achieve Major Cuts: The Social Policy Programme of the 2010 UK Coalition Government
Author(s) -
TaylorGooby Peter
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
social policy and administration
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.972
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1467-9515
pISSN - 0144-5596
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9515.2011.00797.x
Subject(s) - retrenchment , restructuring , coalition government , politics , government (linguistics) , root (linguistics) , set (abstract data type) , state (computer science) , economics , public sector , public administration , economic policy , political science , political economy , economy , finance , law , linguistics , philosophy , algorithm , computer science , programming language
The 2010 Coalition has set itself the challenge of combining an unprecedentedly rapid and profound retrenchment with a fundamental restructuring of the public sector, both to be accomplished within five years. The immediate justification is a presumed need to reduce national indebtedness. The longer‐term goal is to shrink the state, free up the market and set British political economy on a new course. The programme has encountered a number of set‐backs and some elements appear more likely to be realized than others. This article considers the objectives of the Coalition programme and the likely outcomes, using evidence from a number of sources including comparisons with the experience of retrenchment elsewhere and analysis of previous rounds of public spending cut‐backs.