This paper is an attempt to make more specific the familiar sociological notion of the ‘unanticipated consequences of social action’. Reasons for the relative neglect by practitioners and analysts of the side-effects of legislative action are suggested. The discussion of unintended and unanticipated social action is related to the work of classic sociologists, to theorists of diffusion, and to the study of innovations and inventions. Previous studies of Congress (including those by the author) are shown to have focussed on process and representation at the expense of the legislation itself and its consequences, examples of which are considered in this paper. An economic law about the creation of demands by legislation, explaining the development of many side-effects, is proposed. The relationship between rules expressed in enactments and the whole system of formal and informal rules in the life of a society is explored. A number of considerations for future work are outlined, and the paper concludes by arguing that greater awareness of the problem of side-effects will have two valuable consequences: (1) the identification of general tendencies may help to avoid gross perversion of purposes; (2) even where there are no clear regularities of response, the observation of patterns of side-effects and their correlation with other factors may enable analysts to anticipate likely side-effects and suggest readjustments.

This paper analyses the different cost bases in which public expenditure can be analysed as a policy problem related to the differing requirements of planning, authorising and controlling the various components of public expenditure. The analysis is applied to the United Kingdom, where in 1981 changes were announced in the method of making public expenditure decisions which had evolved over the previous two decades. The various components of public expenditure in the United Kingdom are described, and the decision-making process which led to the March 1981 Public Expenditure White Paper is outlined. The significance of the different price bases used in public expenditure (cash (at current or at expected prices), volume, cost, and constant) is then explored. The advantages and disadvantages for policy-makers of attempting to reduce the number of price bases used are analysed; it is shown that there is no cost-free route to reducing complexity. The significance of government's decision in 1981 to make greater use of the cash basis in decision-making is assessed. The analysis is applied specifically to the United Kingdom, but the issues raised are of policy relevance to the choice of price bases for public expenditure decision-making in any country in a time of inflation.

(A second paper in a future issue of the Journal will examine the political purposes behind gross or net measurement, the earmaking of receipts, and the more precise relationships between figures used in the planning of public expenditure, in macro-economic analysis and forecasting and in Parliamentary and local control.)

This paper surveys literature from several disciplines on how and why governments grow. The empirical question as to whether, or to what degree, government has grown is critically entwined with the nature of the ‘dependent variable’ chosen (federal government expenditures as a proportion of GNP, total real public expenditures, number of government employees as a percentage of the workforce, etc.). Specific approaches to the study of government growth considered include those associated with: Wagner's ‘Law’, the ‘Displacement Effect Hypothesis’, formal models of political and economic behavior, behavioral views of organizational decision making, the ineffectiveness of the public sector in coping with economic decline, and Marxist views.

A model of the territorial distribution of public employment within a country is presented, and tested with evidence from the United Kingdom in 1977. Three influences are suggested to account for the pattern of territorial variation: proportionality (an even distribution after standardisation for area and client group characteristics); the structure of the public sector (the presence of industries and services that must be concentrated in some places) and political discretion. These are then related to different activities of government. The first two influences are shown to account for much, though not all, of the territorial variation between United Kingdom nations and regions in 1977, substantial though this was, with Northern Ireland having nearly twice the level of public employment of the West Midlands. Location patterns tend to be byproducts of decisions taken on functional grounds, with structural constraints and service entitlements having a much greater impact than political choice.

Starting without any a priori assumption that government is necessarily a force for good or ill, this article examines what negative consequences are likely to arise from big government – or government growing bigger still. Three generic effects are postulated: a loss of effectiveness, because of the use of weaker means-ends programme technologies for new programmes; an increase in contradictions between existing, growing and new programmes; and a possible reduction of consent, insofar as growth increases the ‘impropriety’ of government actions. The growth of government is shown to be ‘unbalanced’, that is, to occur in incommensurable ways and at varying rates for major resources (government revenue, personnel, and laws); government organizations; and programme outputs. The different character of growth in each element is examined, and particular consequences hypothesized for resource elements singly, for internal characteristics of organizations, and for their combination in programmes. The analysis suggests that while much growth involves no intrinsic problems of size (as long as economic resources are available to meet the costs), there is likely to be disproportionate loss of effectiveness, and increasing contradictions between programmes if big government grows bigger still.

Recent social science research – particularly evaluation research and cost-benefit analysis – has produced a substantial and very useful literature on the impact of public policy and on the relationship of program inputs to outputs and outcomes. However, the explicit focus of these analytic techniques on impacts and outcomes does not systematically yield useful information on why programs have been successes or failures. Policy-makers faced with an evaluation of program success or failure obviously need to know something about the why question if they are to make needed adjustments in the program or carry the lessons of one program to other areas. This article attempts to present a comprehensive framework for explaining and understanding program performance. It is meant to have two uses and to serve two clienteles. First, it presents for social scientists a set of research questions to guide research into the determinants of program performance. Second, it provides public policy-makers with a set of action questions which should be asked and answered appropriately in the actual formulating and carrying out of public policy, as a means of enhancing the chances of program success. The framework is divided into two parts, the formulating process and the carrying out process, although these two processes may overlap considerably, both in time and in terms of substantive concerns. Program success may be impeded by problems or inadequacies in one or more of the components in either the formulating stage or the carrying out stage or in both.

This article discusses the use made of the ‘Austrian’ concept of entrepreneurship in the present British government's policy discussions, and, using an ‘Austrian’ method of argument, demonstrates that there is a deep-seated inconsistency in its policies which suggests that it, along with the administrations of a number of other western democracies including the United States, has not fully understood the implications of the doctrines to which it appears to have committed itself. This inconsistency relates to its continued support for the existing structure of subsidies in the UK housing market which, it is argued, have made private home-buying so profitable an activity for entrepreneurial individuals as to substantially reduce the attractiveness of the option of setting up new businesses. Whether or not the government is right to believe that, in an economic environment with greater incentives, there would be a great expansion in individual entrepreneurial effort in ‘productive’ activities, this is not likely to happen whilst, amongst other things, the structure of housing subsidies remains substantially unchanged. We suggest, in the light of comparative international evidence, that a better alternative is available.

This article analyses and contrasts recent attempts by the governments of Britain and France to devise an industrial strategy for the next two decades, prompted by, and in a bid to come to grips with, the uncertain international economic environment. It is in three main parts. The first part comprises a brief resumé of the main features of industrial policy in the two countries over the last two decades. The next section examines the main features of the new industrial strategies being put together in each country, based on the so-called ‘industries of the future’, supplementing (rather than replacing) other forms of selective intervention. The third part discusses the problems involved in attempting to devise and launch strategies based on picking industrial ‘winners’. It suggests that if, as French experience seems to show, technocratic dictatorship is the price of success, this is a price which most industrial democracies would be unwilling to pay.

In the extensive literature on the rules versus discretion debate three related, but logically distinct, areas of debate are frequently confused: the active versus passive policy debate, the rules versus discretion debate proper, and the open-loop (i.e. fixed) rule versus closed-loop (i.e. contingent) rule debate. Section 2 of this paper examines the nature of and interrelations between these three areas of debate. In section 3 the contributions of economic analysis to the debate are explored in an apolitical framework, in particular, the arguments for rules proposed by Friedman and Kydland and Prescott are assessed. Section 4 extends this framework to take into account the political dimension and the rules versus discretion debate is viewed as a cost-benefit problem involving both political and economic factors. A general conclusion is that since the rules versus discretion debate is an exercise in political economy, the debate cannot be properly assessed in the sterile apolitical framework of pure economic analysis.

This paper presents the results of tests of a number of models of public expenditure growth which have achieved wide currency. The main types of models examined are a permanent income model, electoral cycle models, and stabilization policy models. The models are tested with data from Britain and the United States of America and the results are compared with evidence from other countries. The paper concludes that government expenditure grows in proportion to national income because politicians find it convenient to plan that way; electoral-cyclical factors are relatively unimportant in determining public expenditure; there appears to be a limited role for public expenditure in economic stabilization policy; in a comparative context institutions of expenditure control are important in determining relative rates of growth of public sector consumption expenditure.

Innovation is only one of a range of public policy responses to social and technological novelty and is not necessarily the most appropriate response. While a number of case studies have provided information about determinants of innovation and have traced processes leading to the adoption of innovation, there has been little attention given to the processes that lead to the rejection, deferral or avoidance of available innovations. This paper examines the technical and political controversy surrounding a proposed resource recovery steam plant in metropolitan Syracuse, New York. Although a report on solid waste management had been prepared in 1969 and a dozen consulting studies authorized over the next decade, by 1981 no decision had been reached. In analyzing twelve years of ‘nondecision’, this study seeks to examine some of the difficulties of using technical information in complex policy problems. The case highlights a number of issues pertaining to the use of information in technology policy including: (1) the role of scientific and technical information in policymaking; (2) the interplay between technical information and political values, and (3) the reciprocal effects of information resources and decision processes.

The first of these papers (Copeman, 1981) gave a general description of the British system of public expenditure, and of the different price bases required in times of inflation, and considered recent changes and possible simplification.

The present paper considers how and why the figures (on a given price base) are designed as they are, relating this to requirements of Parliamentary or governmental control (central or local), to operational efficiency, and to the need for open exposition of intentions and restraints. Examples are given from allocations to the Health Service. There are various degrees of control and audit of money voted to non-governmental bodies; where does public expenditure end? Are their accounts in line with control requirements? The comprehensiveness of expenditure planning in the United Kingdom, compared with most other countries, and the extension beyond the year ahead, has been a severe technical challenge. There is an interesting field of research into up-to-date international comparisons. An appendix discusses figures published for public expenditure, general government, central government and local authorities and provides a guide to sources of data about all aspects of public expenditure in Britain.

This essay is an introduction to a little studied aspect of a world-wide phenomenon, the political environment of the professions. In the absence of any model of political interactions between the environment and professions, a deductive developmental model is set out below, detailing the stages of conflict between the professionals and the non-profesionals, or ‘laity’, whom they serve. Its evidence is adduced from primarily the United States, but also from elsewhere in the English-speaking world; its application should be even wider. A concluding section briefly suggests explanatory propositions for this conflict. Throughout, the focus is not upon professionals as such, but upon (a) the potential for conflict which lies in the grant of autonomy given them by the society, and (b) the current crisis when the autonomy of even the most powerful profession is under challenge.

Governmental commissions are an established part of the British and American systems of government. To what extent are they a means by which social science can have an impact upon policy-making? To what extent do they use empirical research methods to gather evidence which influences the commissions' deliberations? What factors hinder the effective use of social science research by governmental commissions? Drawing on case studies of British Royal Commissions and Departmental Committees, and American Presidential Commissions, this article suggests that the potential effectiveness of social science is reduced by the political context in which commissions work, their preferred modes of taking evidence, the way in which commissions are staffed, and the internal dynamics of their workings.

This paper examines three distinct images of the policy process. Iron triangles emphasiże stable relations among a limited number of participants in a relatively closed policy area. Issue networks are fragmented, open and extraordinarily complex and are ill-structured for resolving conflicts and reaching authoritative decisions. The neo-corporatist literature posits a mechanistic interpretation of society: hierarchy, discipline, command and stability, though organized through sectors. These three images can be contrasted with an image of cabinet government which stresses the integrative capacities of central government. The United States can be seen to have moved to some degree from a pattern more closely captured by the iron triangle image to a looser, more complex one resembling features of the issue network image. In Britain, it is possible to detect some movement towards the complexity of the issue network approach. Despite some superficial plausibility, the corporatist image does not apply to Britain, which is best described by drawing on elements of the iron triangle and cabinet government images and some of the complexity of the issue network image. Finally, limits to the fragmentation implied by the issue network image are noted.

Few commentators on the state of the housing market in the UK express satisfaction at the outcome of public policy in this field. From widely differing ideological presuppositions and with divergent views as to causes and cures, researchers nevertheless tend to agree that past policies have failed. This dissatisfaction arguably stems from the departure of housing policy from commonly held views about appropriate objectives. Housing policy is usually viewed as a response to some variety of ‘market failure’ or as a means of income redistribution. In the nineteenth century, externalities of a public health nature were important in encouraging the state to concern itself in the housing market, while the twentieth century has seen growing state involvement ostensibly as a response to so-called ‘distributional externalities’ or possibly on the grounds that housing service represents a ‘merit good’.

This paper examines the problem of inappropriate comparisons in evaluating social programs and the erroneous policy conclusions which can be derived from such comparisons. The paper examines two cases from the United States of America which fail to meet the criterion that comparison groups (if necessary after statistical adjustment) should be identical in all essential respects except in their exposure to the program. In the first of the two cases, involving the measurement of work-effort reduction in negative income tax (NIT) experiments, the inappropriate comparison was made in conducting a statistical analysis of program effects. In the second case, involving the analysis of changes in housing consumption in a housing allowance experiment, the statistical analysis of program effects appears valid, but the correctly measured program outcomes were themselves inappropriately used by policy-makers in drawing policy inferences. The conclusion draws out major lessons for policy analysis and policy-making.