The Political Economy of Regulation

Abstract

Supply-side reforms have been the hallmark of the Thatcher government’s first decade in office. Privatisation, liberalisation, deregulation, and attempts at fiscal and monetary restraint are all attempts to fundamentally alter the role of the state in the British economy. They are based on a political philosophy which contends that the state should provide a framework which enables economic and political freedoms and private initiative to flourish. Nonetheless the Thatcher decade has been one of contradiction and paradox. Despite a government committed to the withering-away of the state, it remains large. Taking any measure, numerical or otherwise, the state has not diminished appreciably during the 1980s.