This part focuses on the policy reversals brought about in the industrial and transitional economies by critical changes concerning the role, size, and structure of the state. In the industrial countries, particularly since the late 1970s and early 1980s, debates, crucial elections, and key policy decisions have centered on the complex problems of the nature and tasks of public and quasipublic enterprises, on the scope and consequences of welfare programs, and on state policies with regard to income redistribution. On the other hand, in the former Soviet countries, multiple conflicts and confrontations – generated within Russia proper, its imperial provinces, and its satellites – have centered inevitably on the complex, interlocking issues brought about by the rapid disaggregation of the main structures of the all-encompassing Soviet party-state.

The debates for or against dismantling public and quasi-public state-owned or -supported enterprises and the actual liquidation or privatization of the most outstanding among them, notably in Great Britain, have had a great impact throughout the world. In Chapter 3, I indicate how these debates throw light on the multiple forms and purposes of public companies and off-budget statutory agencies, as well as on their use as devices for circumventing certain constraints, as alternative ways of asserting control in certain sectors and branches, as channels for moving credit in selected directions, and as instruments for coordinating government programs and plans. The debates also show the difficulties encountered at times in attempts to disentangle the frontiers between the public and the private sectors – for instance, in the case of government-oriented corporations with long-term capital supplied by the state or that are integrated into state-determined planning frameworks.