This book is an unprecedented synthesis of the literature on state
development that explains how and why the contours of the British
state have changed over the last three centuries. Ranging in scope
from the Glorious Revolution to New Labour, it provides a fluent
and comprehensive introduction to the changing shape and role of
the British state.
Philip Harling's main theme is the dramatic broadening of the
state's functions and its cost over the last three centuries, and
most noticeably over the last one. As late as 1870, most Britons
assumed that the only tasks that should be entrusted to the central
government were issues such as the defence of the realm, the
maintenance of public order, and the provision of basic amenities
such as street lighting. Today, they assume that these tasks ought
to extend - and of course they do extend - to the provision of
education, retirement benefits, unemployment insurance, health
care, and a host of other services. Harling takes a number of
historical factors into account in his assessment of the broadening
trajectory of the state, such as the enormous expansion of the
state's traditional war-making role over the eighteenth century,
the uneven development of new regulatory duties in the nineteenth
century, the impact of the two global wars of the twentieth
century, the growth of the postwar welfare state, and the political
reaction against it.
Engagingly written and persuasively argued, "The Modern British
State" should serve as a core text for a wide variety of courses in
modern British history, politics, public policy, and historical
sociology.
General
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