Stabilization and Cutbacks

Abstract

This paper examines twelve major families of explanation of long-term government growth. Its aim is to explore the extent to which theories of government growth can also predict a diminution of government size in some circumstances. Although reversal of government growth has been little discussed, the conclusion is that nine out of the twelve families allow for reversibility, and to that extent the development of a body of literature, separate from the government growth literature, explaining government cutbacks would appear to be intellectually redundant. The nine reversible groups of government growth theory differ according to whether reversibility of growth is contingent (requiring the conditions of growth to be reversed) or automatic (requiring only a continuation of the conditions of growth), and one group may be termed `super-auto-reversible' in that it specifies conditions in which several separate theories of government growth will go into reverse.