44 SOCIAL SCIENTIST equitable distribution have forced the rest of the world to have an expanded public sector with stability and accelerated development as well as deconcentration of property ownership as some of their declared objectives. Fiscal policies reflect the stage of development and the corresponding role of the government in the capitalist world. In the infant stages of capitalism, governments gathered only a minimum quantum of revenues to meet their law and order functions. The burden of such mobilization largely fell on those sections who could not defend themselves adequately through the prevailing framework of institutions and laws. Sturdier growth of adolescent capitalism necessitated a greater involvement of the government in the creation and maintenance of economic infrastructures which were sometimes financed through public borrowing. Instabilities of mature capitalism have led to a substantial enlargement of the scope of public investment and social services. Accordingly, the concept; of "compensatory financing" characterized by unbalanced budgets, massive public debt and deficit financing has become the salient feature of financing policies of governments in the developed countries. Fiscal Policy Objectives In the developing countries, where governments have assumed a pioneering role in industrial development, the scope of public investment embraces several massive and innovative lines of basic, intermediate and directly productive activities apart from the creation of social overhead capital and other infrastructural facilities dictated by the pace and pattern of economic development. Doses of social services have also been added depending on the needs of the ruling classes and the pressures exerted by the underprivileged masses through the electoral and other channels available to them. Fiscal policies in the developing capitalist countries reflect, in varying degrees, these multiple—often contradictory—objectives such as stability, development, self-reliance, reduction of interpersonal inequalities in income and wealth, balanced regional development and so on. Thus fiscal policies, in general, are geared to the needs of the politico-economic system and the interests it seeks to serve. In a market economy, fiscal operations are meant to influence economic decisions in desired directions by stimulating or curbing market forces. It is also recognized as one of the instruments of social and economic planning in mixed economies where market mechanism constitutes the most important channel of resource allocation. However, in totally planned economies where physical controls form the major instrument of resource allocation, fiscal policies are confined merely to balancing operations. Thus, fiscal policies derive their goals and objectives from the broader system of the political economy in operation. The degree of conformity would depsnd upon how closely fiscal policies are integrated with the broader objectives of the plans. In practice, fiscal policies in the market-oriented mixed economies have a short term focus rather than a long'