When European exploration began, Britain's more constrained crown left trade in the hands of privateers, whereas Spain favoured state control of ocean commerce.

ECONOMIST: Creating economic wealth

There he promised cheap loans for farmers and lashed out at privatised utilities, but said he no longer favoured state takeovers, and that he would seek to negotiate, rather than decree, lower debt payments.

ECONOMIST: Peru

His enemies accuse Dr Fox of an incoherence that is typical of the right: craving a smaller state but complaining of cuts to favoured causes.

ECONOMIST: The defence secretary

It took some searching to find a single precedent, William Jennings Bryan, a pacifist who had resigned as secretary of state in 1915 because he believed American policy favoured joining the war in Europe.

ECONOMIST: Cyrus Vance

France is lucky because some of its biggest state-owned assets are utilities, now much favoured by investors.

ECONOMIST: Privatisation in Europe

But the French, when they took over the new state of Lebanon after the first world war, favoured the priests and their school.

ECONOMIST: Family history: Mount Lebanon’s children | The

From Italy to Japan there is a host of evidence that state-controlled banks come under pressure to direct loans to favoured constituencies and to keep uncompetitive companies alive with subsidised credit (see article).

ECONOMIST: Bank bail-outs

One common explanation - favoured by the coalition - is that Labour took a much too rosy view of the underlying state of the public finances in the years leading up to the crunch.

BBC: Debt and the crisis: How did governments get it so wrong?