ABSTRACT
As the title suggests, this text seeks to provide a ‘political’ dimension to the explanation of the dynamics of public expenditure within the UK. The central concern is to enable students to utilise a specific series of tools that are seen as being derived from the study of politics and that could be applied to the issues of public expenditure. These political tools are perceived to be complementary to, and an addition to, those concepts which are derived from the study of economics and sociology. The emphasis on the politics of public expenditure provides a framework which shows that decisions on public policy and expenditure outcomes continuously involve political judgement, political calculation and political choice. Public expenditures on health, education and social services present governments with a series of choices and policy options. It is not inevitable that all governments will respond to a common problem such as changes in population structure in a similar manner. Not all governments will necessarily increase spending on health or social services because of, for example, the growth in the number of elderly people in the population. Furthermore, there is no inevitable relationship between the growth in the economy and public expenditure, and there is no automatic transmission mechanism between what is happening within the economic sphere and public expenditure.
