Dealing with debt: lessons from abroad Print E-mail
Dealing with debt coverEdited by John Springford
June 2010
 
The UK’s new coalition government is performing the first incisions in some drastic surgery to the state. The fiscal consolidation, which will take several years, will require a delicate – and highly political – balancing of competing interests, as it entails a transfer of wealth from taxpayers, government workers, welfare recipients, to debt markets, but in a way that prevents any party from walking out on the deal.
 
Other countries have been here before. Dealing with debt: lessons from abroad brings together four authors, from Canada, Ireland, Sweden, and Australia, to discuss how their governments cut and reshaped the state in recent years, and what social and economic costs and benefits ensued.
 
This publication includes chapters by:
  • David Herle, political advisor to finance minister and prime minister Paul Martin, on the politics of the Canadian cuts of the 1990s
  • Pär Nuder, former Swedish finance minister, on a “social democratic consolidation”
  • Colm McCarthy, chair of Ireland’s 2009 expenditure review, on dealing with two Irish fiscal crises
  • Chris Aulich, specialist on John Howard’s privatisations and public services reforms, which reshaped the Australian state.
 
Download the full report here
 
Press Coverage:
 
The Guardian: Comment is Free, "The four ways we can cut spending", John Springford, 22 June 2010
 
The Observer, "There is no logic to the brutish cut George Osborne is proposing", Will Hutton, 20 June 2010
 
Financial Times, "Prairie wisdom from Britain's age of austerity", David Herle and John Springford,10 June 2010