In France, a similar heritage of managerial incompetence and inertia was overcome by public investment and aggressive indicative planning. British governments, however, confined themselves to collective bargaining, demand management and exhortation. For a state that had nationalized such sweeping tracts of the economy after 1945, and that was by 1970 responsible for spending 47 percent of the country’s GNP, this caution seems a curious paradox. But the British state, although it owned or operated most of the transport, medical, educational and communications sectors, never boasted any overall
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