A Century of Fiscal Squeeze Politics

Contributing to the literature on austerity, this book identifies and compares episodes of ‘fiscal squeeze’ (that is, substantial efforts to cut public spending and/or raise taxes) in the UK over a century from 1900 to 2015. It looks at how different the politics of fiscal squeeze and austerity is today from what it was a century ago, ways in which fiscal squeeze can reshape the state, leading to new ways of organizing government or providing services, and at how political credit and blame play out in the aftermath of fiscal squeeze. The analysis is both quantitative and qualitative, starting with reported financial outcomes and then looking at the political choices and processes that lie behind those outcomes to identify patterns and puzzles that have not been recognized or explained adequately so far in received theory. Thus the book identifies a long-term shift from deep but short-lived episodes of spending restraint or tax increases in the earlier part of the century towards episodes in which the pain is spread out over a longer period during the latter part of the century. It also identifies a marked reduction of revenue-led squeezes in the last part of the century. Analysing fiscal squeeze both in terms of reported outcomes and a qualitative analysis of loss imposition, political cost to incumbents and state, helps to solve a puzzle in the literature about the electoral effects of austerity and apparently erratic voter ‘punishment’ of governments that impose austerity policies.