ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the balance of power in policy-making between ministers and civil servants but the process involves many more players than just those two. Cause groups are the democratic means of representing opinion groups and are a constant feature of political life. Media campaigns can often be part of such activity, while academics can find that suddenly their work expresses the zeitgeist are adopted. The most important area of the policy-making 'community' involves the prime minister, the chancellor, members of the core executive like the top officials in the Treasury, close economic advisers and the governor of the Bank of England. Monetarism is analysis, formulated most famously by the Chicago economist Professor Milton Friedman, argued that inflation was the product of too much money circulating in the economy. Pluralism suggests that the various interest groups in society, connected to the economy, the professions and so forth, are all engaged in a competitive process to apply influence.
