Whilst the prevailing orthodoxy of the expenditure retrenchment literature
is that globalisation and neo-liberal ideas are leading to a downsizing of the state, empirical research - basing its conclusions on patterns of welfare state spending - does not support such a view. This book brings a new perspective to bear by looking at what has been happening to other areas of the state's activity.Edited by Francis G. Castles, a leading authority in the field, and bringing together an outstanding group of British, German and American scholars, it examines trends in non-social or 'core' spending on public administration, defence, public order, education, economic affairs and debt financing and in the regulatory ordering of the economic sphere. The book not only opens up new areas of comparative public policy research, >but also demonstrates clearly that there have been real reductions in the reach of state in some areas, although patterns of causation are more complex and varied than generally presumed by the retrenchment literature.

The research findings reported in The Disappearing State? provide pivotal, relevant and challenging core material for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate courses in public and social policy, political economy and the sociology of the modern state.