Maurice Wright

This controversial and authoritative account of budget-making and budgetary politics, the author traces the origins and development of Japan's present crisis. In a detailed analysis of the institutions, structures, and processes of central government, the author explains how decisions were made about how much to spend and on what in the central budget and the Fiscal and Investment Loan Programme - the so-called 'second budget'. Wright shows who and what won and lost and why, explains the informal policy and behavioral rules-of-the-game by which the conduct of the main players was regulated, and compares Japan's fiscal performance with the UK and other G7 countries. It challenges the orthodoxy that a dominant and dominating Ministry of Finance (MOF) implemented tough policies of retrenchment in the 1980s. The appearance of fiscal discipline was not matched by the reality of too much spending, too few revenues, and heavy borrowing. MOF not only failed to restore a balanced budget, it was unable to achieve most of its short and long-term fiscal objectives during the last quarter of the 20th Century. Unravelling the complexity and opacity of the budgetary system, the author shows how MOF officials exploited it to foster an illusion of control. Through adroit manipulation of off-budget sources, and by fiscal sleight-of-hand, MOF was able to deliver an expanding supply of budget benefits to the ruling Liberal Democratic party, and the means to finance the growth and maintenance of a 'Public Works State'.

The Treasury is at the heart of British Government, responsible for deciding how much to spend and on what. Both the institution and the public expenditure process are the focus of `The Treasury and Whitehall', a tour de force of contemporary policy analysis. Based on research undertaken with the cooperation of the Treasury and Whitehall departments, it shows how the key decisions of planning, allocating and controlling public expenditure are made. With unique access to treasury Expenditure Controllers and senior financial officials in the main spending departments, the book provides a detailed and authoritative account of the roles, relationships and inter-actions of the key players in Whitehall Expenditure Community as they confront each other in annual rituals of the Expenditure 'Survey'. Thain and Wright explain how the rules of the expenditure game were re-drawn in the 1980s in the relentless search for cuts, greater economy and efficiency in the design and delivery of public services, and the creation of a more enterprising administrative culture. The authors explain how and why the Treasury was rarely able to impose its constitutional authority to stem the tide of rising public expenditure through the turbulent years of the Thatcher and Major Governments. They show that the Treasury is locked into a system of mutually constrained power-relationships with the Whitehall departments, and obliged to negotiate discretionary authority to control their spending.