ABSTRACT
It is important to grasp the way in which changes in the wider economic and political contexts have shaped the policy-making agenda. In the economic sphere, with rising unemployment, slow growth and the United Kingdom's inability to compete in increasingly competitive international markets, successive governments from the 1970s onwards found themselves in a new economic context, demanding new solutions and different economic strategies. Similarly the wider political context, itself bound up with changes in the economic context, also changed during this period in terms of new demands, issues and political alignments. The most dramatic and decisive aspect of these changes was the election in 1979 of a government intent on breaking with the consensus around a Keynesian Welfare State political strategy during the post-war period. It is important to recognise what all this meant for the policy process. Policies are never made in a political vacuum; there are changing demands, new policy issues and new political alliances attempting to shape the political agenda to influence what direction policies should take.
