ABSTRACT
From the Second World War until very recently, most Western societies have treated an expanding public sector as the norm. Citizens in these countries have grown used to a consistent expansion in the state’s provision of goods and services, in particular goods and services associated with the welfare state like education, health, social security and employment.1 The 1945 election of the Labour party in Britain is often seen as a watershed in this regard - an emphatic popular endorsement of state planning as a promoter of the collective good through the pursuit of welfare policies and creation of welfare institutions like the National Health Service.2 It is striking how universal this process has been amongst advanced industrial democracies: in most OECD countries, including the United States, the proportion of national income allocated to social welfare services has
increased steadily (in some instances dramatically) since the late 1940s, frequently absorbing as much as 50 per cent of GDP, and there has been a dramatic expansion in public employment and in the number of citizens receiving their primary income from the state in one form or another.3
