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Ideas, Institutions and the Policies of Governments: a Comparative Analysis: Parts I and II

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Anthony King
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Extract

This paper is about the things governments do and why they do them. It is written in the belief that, while we know quite a lot about decision-making processes in individual countries, we do not know nearly enough about why the governments of different countries make different decisions and pursue different policies. The countries of North America and western Europe are often described as ‘welfare states’, the implication being that the governments of all of them do broadly similar things in broadly similar ways. As we shall see, however, these broad similarities conceal important, wide divergences. These divergences deserve to be explained.

Type
Articles
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 3 , Issue 3 , July 1973 , pp. 291 - 313
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1973

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References

1 A tiny private sector survives in Germany. On the running of the Bundesbahn, see Ridley, F., ‘The German Federal Railways — A State Administered System’, Parliamentary Affairs, XVII (1964), 182–94.Google Scholar

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3 On the history of Canadian telephones, see the article on Telephones in the Encyclopedia Canadiana, IX, pp. 34–8.

4 On hydro-electric power in Canada, see the article on the subject in the Encyclopedia Canadiana, V, pp. 211–21.Google Scholar For a brief summary of the position in the United States, see Redford, Emmette S., American Government and the Economy (New York: Macmillan, 1965), pp. 601–3.Google Scholar

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12 It is extraordinarily difficult to obtain accurate, comparable information on different countries’ social services; and, even apart from the problem of information, different countries’ social services are exceedingly hard to compare since they differ so widely in their coverage, in their benefits, in the conditions attached to them, and in their administration. Unless otherwise indicated, most of the information in the following paragraphs is obtained from a survey published by the United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare, Social Security Programs Throughout the World, 1969. See also Commission of the European Communities, Comparative Tables of the Social Security Systems in the member States of the European Communities (Situation at 1 July 1970) I-General System.

13 The quotation is from Ardagh, John, The New France: De Gaulle and After (Harmondsworth Middx.: Penguin Books, 1970), p. 438.Google Scholar For an account of the new Canadian scheme, see a document published by the Canadian Department of National Health and Welfare in 1968, Health and Welfare Services in Canada, pp. 52et seq.Google Scholar On France, see the European Communities document cited in fn. 12 and also Laroque, Pierre, ‘Social Security in France’ in Jenkins, Shirley, ed., Social Security in International Perspective (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969)Google Scholar, and Collins, Doreen, ‘The French Social Security Reform of 1967’, Public Administration, XLVII (1969), 91–111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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22 Only outline answers can be given, partly for reasons of space, but partly because in many cases the relevant history has not been written: political scientists seldom concern themselves with the pasts of present policies; historians often fail to ask the questions that political scientists would.

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28 The account in the following two paragraphs and all of the quotations are taken from Corbett, David, Politics and the Airlines (London: Allen and Unwin, 1965), pp. 106–13.Google Scholar

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36 Quoted by Braithwaite, William J. in Lloyd George's Ambulance Wagon, edited by Bunbury, Henry N. (London: Methuen, 1957), p. 156.Google Scholar

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