What has been the pattern of government growth in the UK and comparable countries this century? How does the UK compare with other countries in recent years?

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What has been the pattern of government growth in the UK and comparable countries this century? How does the UK compare with other countries in recent years? What in your view are the most convincing theories that have been put forward to explain the growth of government?

The size and consistency of British government, and its components, have greatly changed since the end of the Victorian era and the full industrialisation of this country. This essay aims to show, if not rather briefly, that the growth of British government can be seen not only being due to one in particular increase but an accumulation of many aspects and measurements of the government infrastructure and spending tendencies. These changes have also occurred in similar ways in other western countries, especially throughout Europe, and until recently (shown up to the late 1970’s in this essay), increasing growth of other European governments has been an important part of the increasing importance of realisation of the need and wellbeing of a countries populace. Recently, although still attempting to retain quality of service, the public sector is being radically transformed, with the introduction of privatisation especially reshaping the format, size and budget of government and other new initiatives like the concept of E-government having unknown affects of British government. Explaining this growth can be quite tricky, but this essays hopes to show many different affects of social and economical change over the past century that could give some explanation as to its reasoning.

The change in British government over the last hundred years can be seen as an increase in the role of governments expected influence on people, which is reflected in a huge increase in the size and spending of the civil service, and restructuring of government departments. But firstly it is important to affirm the nature of this change and illustrate why the government’s physical change is attributed to a change of attitude preceding the First World War. This change is mainly down to the increase in working class awareness of civil rights and the government changing role to an interventionist state and that of a provider rather than the Victorian realisation of government as an oppressive or inquisitorial agent in the lives of the people. This change in its perception of its self lead to the government’s expenditure on social services increasing from only £5million in the 1880’s to £33million by 1913 and an increase in civil service size from 960,000 employees in 1901 to 1,270,000 by 1911, effectively making it a major employer in its own right. (Pugh, M., pg141). There was a distinct increase in the number of government departments and civil service through the first half of this century with 18 departments in 1914; twenty-one years in 1935 there were 23; twenty-one years later again, in 1956, the total amounted to 26. Although by the amount of civil servants by the later half of the 20th century only came to 700,000, which indicates a decrease from the 1913 total, this is mainly due to the sum of military personnel, and in fact, the true total of actual administrative government personnel had distinctly grown with the increase in the amount of departments. Public sector employment as a percentage of total work force increased from about 7.4% in 1900 to 20% by 1979 (Middleton, R, pg.4). Although the amount of departments had decreased to only 17 by 1972, this was due to the absorption of many departments into others, like in defence and social services and does not indicate a downturn in the actual physical size of government, but the creation of ‘giant’ departments (Stankiewicz, W., pg .234).

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But what is said to be a better indicator of this growth is in fact government expenditure as a percent of GDP, this of course indicates how much of the country’s money is being directed into government. Between 1900-1979 government expenditure as a percentage of GDP increased by between 2 ½ - 3 fold, from around 14% to 42.9%. What is interesting about this figure is that although it is below EC-9 mean of 48.8% it is still within 3-5% of France, Germany and Italy which represent the most appropriate comparison to Britain in terms of populace and industrial development. ...

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