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Britain: the politics of foreign economic policy, the domestic economy, and the problem of pluralistic stagnation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Stephen Blank
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Economic policies in Britain after World War II, both domestic and international, were dominated by foreign policy goals. This provides the primary explanation for Britain's poor economic performance in the postwar years. Commitments made in the late 1940s and 1950s, particularly with regard to Britain's international position and responsibilities, and domestic economic policies devised to support these commitments, locked Britain into a low-growth situation. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the widespread consensus supporting these commitments began to disintegrate and efforts were made to develop new policies directed toward stimulating domestic economic growth. These efforts were unsuccessful–largely because of the unwillingness of government leaders to shift national priorities away from traditional international commitments. This failure made it impossible for the British economy to meet the rising expectations of the British population and contributed, after 1967, to a widespread increase in social conflict. Compared to other advanced industrial nations, Britain's economic performance since 1945 has been poor. Britain's poor economic performance is due, however, not to the weakness of British governments or to their inability to resist demands made by interests groups, but rather to a series of policy choices, especially in the international area, that were inappropriate for Britain's resources but to which successive governments adhered with remarkable stubbornness and rigidity.

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Research Article
Information
International Organization , Volume 31 , Issue 4 , Autumn 1977 , pp. 673 - 721
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1977

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References

1 This essay forms part of a wider study on the “political framework of economic policy making in advanced industrial nations.” A much earlier draft of this paper was presented at the 1975 annual meeting of the British Politics Association. The support of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Center for West European Studies at Harvard University is gratefully acknowledged. In addition, I wish to thank the Rockefeller Foundation for permitting me to work on this project as a resident at the Villa Serbelloni.

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