ABSTRACT
How far has our thesis, that government relations with the business sector were dominated by considerations of external defence and internal unification, been borne out? What other factors, including ideological commitments, economic growth and cultural dimensions, were important? Whereas there is little doubt that explicit government commitments for or against planning, free trade and capitalism were present by the mid twentieth century, the argument here has been that such commitments were largely absent in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and cannot explain the actual government policies which emerged. Interest groups like landowners and manufacturing lobbies played a part, especially since universal suffrage emerged only at the end of our period, but rarely overrode governments’ strategic policies. We are not claiming to be the first to emphasise strategic factors in government economic policy. Economic history textbooks, especially for Europe, have certainly mentioned them. What they have not done is explain systematically the differences between countries, their pervasive influence through all parts of the economy and what this means for judgements on the effectiveness of government policy. Nor has the literature established clear links between central government policies and the problems of urbanisation which faced local government. Economic growth and living standards have, quite rightly, been the areas of major interest in economic history, but if these were not prime government targets, then government effectiveness in raising growth and living standards is not an appropriate criterion for judging the relations between government and the business sector.
