Political promises in not the only purely political reason for governments getting involved. Another reason is that the state could want more control. By nationalising for example, the government gains a lot of control as the state employs the people and not people employed by private individuals. The fact that these people are now dependant of the state gives the state a lot of power. In former communist USSR for example, where everything was run by the state, the state had a lot of power and therefore the people were afraid of it. This does not occur in liberal countries with liberal economies as the power is hold by big companies and businesses. By privatising nationalised businesses, the power is lost again and the role of the government in the economy shrinks.
Although political reasons are very important, there are some reasons which are purely economical. As governments are there to run the country efficiently and are there to improve the national standard of living, their major concern is employment. Employment is the source to national wealth and economic strengths. The more people are unemployment, the more people have to live of the social welfare system and so the more expenses the state has which will automatically lead to an increase in tax for the working population, employees and employers. High taxes are although a kind of barrier for existing and new businesses as they decrease their profits, so they would be attracted to that country and probably would move somewhere else where taxes are lower and as a result of that many more jobs would be lost. This little demonstration makes clear how important it is to keep employment high and to attract new businesses with new jobs. This is the major task the government has at all times, under any circumstances; keep employment high. This can happen through lowering the tax levels, or through giving special government grants to make industry keep labour even if they actually don’t really need them. It is to be underlined that the government has many ways of attracting industry into its country and it is his main role.
Recently governments have got new tasks concerning businesses and industry. The task of the protection of the environment. As people got concerned about the effects of industry on the environment through pollution, governments passed new laws to set a guideline and limits mainly for the secondary sector. These guidelines and laws are there to protect the environment and have a big impact on certain businesses. As heavy polluting industries were unable to meet the guidelines set by the state, they too often moved out of that country into others where the law is not so strict about the environment, especially third world less developed ones.
As it is made clear here, governments are greatly involved in the economy for many reason but their job is mainly keeping employment high without harming the environment concerned.
