BRITISH GOVERNMENT 1979 1993
This essay deals with the above captioned article by
Jeremy Richardson. It does so by summarizing the main points
of the article, analyzing how the author develops and supports
his arguments and then critiques the principal shortcomings of
his approach, arguments and conclusions.
Richardson's primary thesis is that the attempt by the
British Government under Mrs. Thatcher and her successors to
limit the role of the state, to reduce governent intervention in
society and to promote a return to freer markets, has actually
resulted in a "massive increase in direct state intervention in
Richardson argues that previously policy was determined by
a complicated set of interactions between government and private
interests, a sharing of power "between government and organised
society," (181) which was characterized by "a very close and
often symbiotic" (180) relationship between regulators and
regulated. Under this system "very few organized interests have
been refused access to policy makers." (181). He then traces the
disillusionment in Britain and elsewhere with the failures of the
welfare state and socialist direction of the economy and the
sluggish response of established institutions to the need for
fundamental changes in policy direction and their systemic
workings, "Britain's reform deficit." (182).
The former system has been replaced by one in which "there
was a conscious attempt to move from a consensual to an
impositional style of governing" and "conflictual politics."
(183). In seeking "to facilitate the operation of market forces"
(179), successive Conservative governments pursued policies, one
goal of which was "forcing people to be free" (180). This has
resulted in a trend toward greater centralization of power in
governmental and new quasi public regulator...