The Disappearing State?

'Most comparative research on public expenditure retrenchment has concentrated on the welfare state. This exciting and innovative volume takes a new approach. It focuses instead on non-social programmes such as education, defence and economic affairs, demonstrates that this is where the real cost-cutting has taken place and shows, paradoxically, that these cuts have made social spending more politically salient in the public expenditure calculus. This is a book which extends the reach of our understanding of modern public policy at the same time as it extends our knowledge of the reach of the modern state.' -- Stephan Leibfried, University of Bremen, Germany 'In this volume, Frank Castles and his team of experts continue the myth-busting process begun in Castles's 2004 analysis of welfare state crisis. Their combination of statistical sophistication and theoretical reflection on the political economy of public expenditure slices straight through the myriad misplaced assumptions regarding the decline of the state, globalization, "races to the bottom" and welfare retrenchment. This book makes compulsory reading for all social scientists.' -- Martin Rhodes, University of Denver, US 'I like simple sentences, cross-country collaborations, great graphs, and compelling conclusions. Here, remarkably, we have a book with all four. This is vibrant writing on a topic - the long reach of state spending - that figures in everyone's lives. It is hard to know whether the book will be more gripping for the Prime Minister or for high-brow professors of economics and political science.' -- Andrew Oswald, University of Warwick, UK

Edited by Francis G. Castles, Adjunct Professor of Political Science, Australian National University. He was formerly Professor of Social and Public Policy at the University of Edinburgh, UK

Contents: Preface 1. Introduction Francis G. Castles 2. Testing the Retrenchment Hypothesis: An Aggregate Overview Francis G. Castles 3. Data on the Functions of Government: Where Are We Now? Neil Fraser and Paul Norris 4. The Changing Cost of Government: Trends in the State Overhead Budget Richard Parry 5. Sinking Budgets and Ballooning Prices: Recent Developments Connected to Military Spending Thomas R. Cusack 6. Expenditure on Public Order and Safety Paul Norris 7. Testing the Retrenchment Hypothesis: Educational Spending, 19602002 Manfred G. Schmidt 8. The Real Race to the Bottom: What Happened to Economic Affairs Expenditure After 1980? Herbert Obinger and Reimut Zohlnhfer 9. A Mortgage on the Future? Public Debt Expenditure and Its Determinants, 19802001 Uwe Wagschal 10. Moving Beyond Expenditure Accounts: The Changing Contours of the Regulatory State, 19802003 Nico A. Siegel Index