Government and business : study in economic evolution

Several major considerations determined this book's presentation of the interrelationships between government and business. Perhaps the most important was a desire to emphasize the underlying con text within which economic policy is formulated, rather than merely particular policies actually set in motion. The reader thereby gains a greater familiarity with the way public policy is made in a de mocracy and a better understanding both of the policies currently in operation and of the principles behind them.

This emphasis in turn necessitated giving top billing to the sources of public policy, which, speaking broadly, are threefold. There is the institutional framework inherited from the past, for the status quo in any society ministers to values so important to its members that they are typically unwilling to see any but peripheral changes made therein. Second are the difficulties which policy decisions are designed to remedy, for by definition policy changes will not be seriously discussed until the status quo is felt to be inadequate. And lastly, there are the human conflicts which inevitably form around whatever solutions are proposed.