In the past 10 years, many western democracies have dramatically
restructured their public sectors. The forces that have driven this
restructuring are now familiar. Government expenditure in many
jurisdictions grew significantly throughout the late 1970s and 1980s,
for a combination of reasons. At the time, however, there was little
popular support for new tax measures to defray the cost of new
spending. The taxing power of governments was also constrained by
the increasing ease with which citizens and businesses could move
from one jurisdiction to another. The result was a rapid expansion in
governmental indebtedness. By the early 1990s, the cost of servicing
this debt was itself a significant burden on government treasuries.
Governments began substantial efforts at retrenchment that were
aimed, as Vice President Al Gore of the United States put it in 1993,
at making government “work better and cost less” (Gore 1993).