Essential functions

The importance of knowing the reasons that make state intervention necessary More government!Less government!Two cries often bandied about by people with opposing viewpoints.These hackneyed slogans are of course based on ideological biases.But they are of no use in determining whether or not the state is in phase with contemporary society.It would be worthwhile to reflect on the state's role and missions.The state cannot exist for itself.It was created to respond to the needs of society and resolve collective problems.This is its raison d' tre, that which legitimizes it in the eyes of citizens.From this point of view, this contribution is completely in keeping with the IDHEAP model of public administration, and more particularly with the part devoted to the context and environment in which public administration is exercised.Having a clear view of the state's essential functions can tell us whether state intervention is a priori necessary or whether a matter can be entrusted to private actors alone.Article 5 of the Federal Constitution asserts that the principle of subsidiarity must be observed in the allocation and performance of state tasks and that "all activities of the state are based on and limited by law." Be that as it may, the competencies constitutionally allocated to the state have widened over time.They are listed and defined in 72 of the 196 articles of the 2020 Constitution (art.54 to 125).This widening of competencies can be seen through the general government spending ratio indicator, which expresses state expenditure as a proportion of the country's gross domestic product (GDP).The evolution in this indicator for Switzerland during the second half of the 20th century is shown in Figure 2.1 and is compared with that of the average of member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), for which we have data going back to the beginning of the 20th century.State expenditure has constantly increased as a proportion of GDP, rising from 11% in 1900 to 28% during World War II, falling