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For a number of reasons the reframing of social citizenship has been pursued more rapidly in the UK than in most other countries, so that national experience offers a useful object lesson in the strengths and weaknesses of rational actor reforms in the European context. This chapter analyses the reframing process in detail under successive governments, paying attention to the institutional structure of government departments, the part played by the Treasury, and the understanding of the challenges by the chief policy actors. It discusses the logic of policy reform in official documents and shows how rational actor assumptions predominate. The problems identified in relation to the new policies are chiefly to do with the difficulties of structuring incentives appropriately and of establishing a level playing field for equal opportunity policies. The issues that provider incentives may focus on the competitive advantage of their particular agency rather than public benefit, social inclusion may receive little support, and the value basis of social trust may be damaged receive insufficient recognition.

This chapter covers Urwick's roles and activities during the Second World War, when he took leave of absence from Urwick Orr to enter public service. It is, however, largely a story of frustration. Initially, Urwick undertook the reorganization of a Territorial Army Division, but although its commander recommended that the results should be spread elsewhere, the War Office declined to make any such changes. Urwick then joined the Treasury, only to find that his recognized status in the management world counted for little in the Civil Service. He carried out a number of projects, most with limited acceptance of their recommendations. Frustrated, Urwick overstepped the protocols and was forced to resign in 1942. He found a further role in the War Office dealing with the use of petroleum, but nevertheless asked to be released in December 1944 in order to pursue his educational interests.

The pension reforms proposed by Lord Turner's Pensions Commission were certainly radical, although perhaps not as radical as they might have been. How well did the government of Britain rise to the challenge posed by the Pensions Commission? In the months leading up to the white paper, a major battle raged in Whitehall. Although interpreted through the prism of conflict between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, in fact a very familiar and traditional pattern of British pension policy-making was unfolding, with the Treasury fighting to contain spending commitments on pensions over the long term. It was arguably only the potentially expensive prospect of over 70 per cent of pensioners being able to claim means-tested Pension Credit by the middle of the century that has forced a recalibration of the present system. A few details demonstrate how the Commission's recommendations have been modified to secure this end. The most heavily trailed of the white paper's proposals is the relinking of the basic state pension to average earnings rather than prices.

This chapter offers a new interpretation of the resignation of the Conservative Treasury team of Peter Thorneycroft, Nigel Birch, and Enoch Powell in January 1958, and suggests that this episode, caused by disagreements over inflation, cannot be seen as a ‘rehearsal’ for future debates between ‘Monetarists’ and ‘Keynesians’ in the party. Rather, it suggests that the events of 1958 must be seen as part of a debate that had profound but much more nuanced implications for the future development of Conservative political economy.

Polk's plantation enterprise was a risky business. The first years of his Mississippi venture were discouraging, and Polk considered selling out in 1838. But he ended up by buying out his business partner, thus greatly increasing his investment in plantation land and slaves. Although he wavered again in 1843, he continued buying additional slaves when he felt he could afford it. By persisting in the face of difficulties, Polk established a splendid (from his own point of view) source of income for himself and later for his widow, the average annual profit rate of which was virtually 11 percent during the thirteen years from 1845 to 1857. This was much higher than the 6 percent return he received from investing some of his presidential salary into U.S. Treasury certificates.

This chapter presents the twofold international objectives of the Union: to obtain financial and material support abroad while blocking European powers from recognizing and assisting the Confederacy. It discusses that Salmon P. Chase inherited in early 1861 a Treasury Department that had run a deficit of more than $7 million the previous year. It shows some of the Treasury decisions that Chase made. It also examines Belmont as an excellent Union agent sent to Europe during the war. It assesses the ways on how the U.S. secured financial support in Europe. It presents some of the Union efforts in Europe to minimize and European financial and material support for the Confederacy.

This chapter compares the ratification struggle over the Treaty of Versailles with the passage of the Bretton Woods Agreement Act to demonstrate the legislature’s concern with how multilateralism would alter the checks and balances of American government, and how the institution of Congress was initially able to shape outcomes in international organizations through procedural maneuvers. The chapter argues that in order to surmount the challenges that the Covenant of the League of Nations met in the Senate, the Roosevelt administration included representatives of both political parties and key interest groups early in the process of planning the IMF and World Bank. The administration worked through the National Foreign Trade Council to mobilize a wide-ranging constituency in American civil society. As the act moved through the House and Senate, compromise with powerful committee chairs and the American Bankers Association secured passage. Compromises reached created mechanisms through which initial efforts at congressional advocacy could occur, primarily the National Advisory Council. Nonetheless, during the enactment stage, the Treasury Department organized interest groups with the goal of US membership. Ongoing effort would be required for them to play a major role in the world economy.

This chapter details events in Josephine Roche's life from 1935 to 1939. Despite her many other roles, Roche's primary obligation in the New Deal government was oversight of health policy. She fulfilled that obligation in two ways. Within the Treasury Department, she took charge of the Public Health Service at a moment of explosive growth, championing a vastly expanded mandate for the agency and building a more effective public health infrastructure in the states. Outside the Treasury, she spearheaded a campaign to elevate health care to the status of a “basic American right.” In the course of that campaign, Roche patched together a national health plan, which she used to generate a nationwide conversation about the role of the federal government in health care.

This concluding chapter reviews how Locke's attempt to establish a stable and trustworthy monetary standard was nothing short of a fiasco. When the secretary of the Treasury proposed to stabilize the currency by lowering its silver content coins, Locke rejected the idea. He argued instead that coins should not represent anything other than the “intrinsick value” of their silver content. If the government abandoned the “natural” worth of coins, they would further undermine the trust that people have in their currency. Locke's insistence that Parliament ensure the worth or trustworthiness of the currency by maintaining its weight led to the Great Recoinage of 1696. However, most contemporary economists believe that England would have been better off had Locke lost the argument and allowed the Treasury to debase the coin.

Following US-led military intervention and regime change, Afghanistan's reconstruction, unlike Iraq's, was largely UN-led. The new government made executive decisions but was highly aid-dependent. By channeling aid outside control of the government, donors failed to strengthen and legitimize it. Efforts to eliminate poppy plantations without a viable economic alternative have increased conflict and strengthened the Taliban, rather than being a peace-supporting strategy. This chapter critically analyzes whether the reconstruction strategy in a country with such limited resources, weak institutions, and low capacity to absorb aid requires the sophisticated legal, institutional, and regulatory framework that the IFIs, USAID, and the US Treasury supported and helped design. Furthermore, with few exceptions, such framework largely ignored national preferences or cultural idiosyncrasies and was inflexible enough to detract from efforts at rehabilitation and social policies. These would have facilitated peace consolidation in the short run by improving the welfare of the population.

This chapter focuses on the reorganisation of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). It suggests that the goal of General Adviser on War-Time Organisation was not to break the organization, but to produce a tidy and acceptable pattern which would save the BBC from incessant intervention from the Treasury Department. It explains that the reorganisation was designed to establish financial control and to reform the highly centralised pre-administrative machine built up in peace-time.

The point of departure for this book is the Washington Consensus — the set of views about effective development strategies that have come to be associated with the Washington-based institutions: the IMF, the World Bank, and the US Treasury. This introductory chapter briefly discusses the origins of the Washington Consensus and how its meaning has changed and been interpreted. It then goes on to outline the chapters in the book.

If there is a consensus today about what strategies are most likely to promote development in poor countries, it is this: the ‘Washington Consensus’ — the oversimplified rendition of policies recommended by international financial institutions and the US Treasury — did not provide the answer. This chapter reviews the tenets of the Washington Consensus and shows why its orthodox recipes failed to generate economic growth in the countries that applied them. It goes on to outline the ‘post-“Washington Consensus” Consensus’, which has emerged as a result of the growing dissatisfaction with the Washington Consensus failures. Aspects include: the agreement that a successful development strategy cannot come only from Washington but must include the developing world in a meaningful way; one-site-fits-all policies are doomed to fail; countries should be given room to experiment, use their own judgment, and explore alternatives; development requires a balanced role between the state and the market and the strengthening of the institutions in each; and finally, success must be measured not only in GDP, but also must account for distribution as well as social and environmental sustainability.

The first part of this chapter discusses the institutional response of the London Stock Exchange to the long‐expected outbreak of the Second World War––a response that, unlike that to the First World War, had been planned. The various aspects discussed include the planning and operation of the agreements made between the Exchange and the Treasury and the Bank of England (which ceded ultimate power to the Treasury, and ultimately led to a post‐war compromise on the relative power of the government and Exchange over the securities market) and plans to physically relocate to the Denham film studios (subsequently abandoned). The rest of the chapter discusses the effects of the war on membership and the new rules on rebates, and competition––aspects covered include North American brokerage houses in London, foreign business, the market for domestic securities, provincial stock exchanges, country jobbing, the Stock Exchange ban on account trading, Treasury refusal to give permission for markets in various issues, and securities values.

The first part of this chapter discusses the efforts by the London Stock Exchange to survive and prosper post‐war under continuing government control, and to try to avoid direct Treasury supervision of the securities market––or even nationalization. Steps towards a peacetime operation are outlined––they were slow and had to be arranged in direct consultation with the government. The second part of the chapter describes the various post‐war institutional changes in the Stock Exchange in the light of the slowly emerging arrangement whereby it was trusted with responsible management of the securities market within a framework set by the (nationalized) Bank of England, and ultimately determined by the Treasury and government. The last part of the chapter looks at the declining importance of the Stock Exchange as the global securities market began to bypass London, as a result of the combined influence of both exchange controls and the Stock Exchange's own restrictive practices on international business; it was also unable to capitalize on its established domestic securities position.

This chapter look at the decline of the London Stock Exchange during the 1950s. The first part discusses the ways that the Stock Exchange raised money to enable it to survive in the early 1950s, relations between it and the government (which were conducted informally through confidential exchanges between the Governor of the Bank of England and the Chairman of the Stock Exchange), the restoration of option dealing, and the use of the Stock Exchange by the government to police activities regarding securities. The second part discusses the policing of the members of the Stock Exchange, and the third discusses the growing competition from the provincial stock exchanges, closer integration with the London‐based North American brokerage houses, and the Stock Exchange's lack of concern with international business. The last section looks at money and capital (securities) markets in the face of the decline of the Stock Exchange over the 1950s.