Redefining the state : privatization and welfare reform in industrial and transitional economies

Professor Spulber traces the role of the state in the West and East for more than two centuries along parallel lines--first from the creation of the Welfare State in the West, and the Party-State in the East, to reform of the Western Welfare State by means of privatization and entitlement changes, to transmutations in the East through large scale privatizations and the creation of the ''nomenklatura capitalism.'' He establishes an original connection between dismantling state enterprises and limitation of government functions at all levels in the West, and the collapse and then restructuring of the state on new foundations in the East. Professor Spulber traces the role of the state in the West and East for more than two centuries along parallel lines -- first from the creation of the Welfare State in the West, and the Party-State in the East, to reform of the Western Welfare State by means of privatization and entitlement changes, to transmutations in the East through large scale privatizations and the creation of the nomenklatura capitalism. He establishes an original connection between dismantling state enterprises and limitation of government functions at all levels in the West, and the collapse and then restructuring of the state on new foundations in the East. Redefining the State examines in historical perspective the changes of the role of the state with regard to public ownership and the scope of welfare in the main industrial and transitional economies. These changes have given rise to illuminating debates on the state's size, range, and function, and have involved important transformations concerning the boundaries between the public and private sector, the forms and extent of privatization, and the nature and content of public welfare. These debates and transformations are of critical importance to understanding the actual and potential scope of the state in any economy. The emerging and then consolidating European monarchic states of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries inherited from the powerful examples of the medieval city-states such as Milan, Florence, Bologna, Genoa, and Venice a tradition of continuous interventions of the central power in the economic and social life of their communities, along with a strong impulse toward an incessant warfare of competition and aggression. Spulber examines historically the changes, debates, and innovations which have shaped the role of the state in relation to different types of economy - covering a wide range of issues concerning the public and private sectors, and essential to an understanding of this important issue. Part I : Rationale For The State's Expansion -- Part Ii : Methods Of Remodeling The State -- Part Iii : Comparisons Within Brooder Frameworks -- Part Iv : Outlook For The Twenty-first Century Nicolas Spulber. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 221-245) And Index. Covers the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Looks at the growth and reform of the welfare state