Description: 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.
Review Quotes: "I know of no other work of scholarship that takes on this topic with such scope, magnitude, impartiality, and historical breadth. The author's approach is both theoretical and empirical, and the author presents a non-ideological and dispassionate analysis on a subject on which most people disagree. What is remarkable is Spulber's ability to carry major trends through the late 1990s - a feat that requires careful evaluation of current non-scholarly writings. Spulber's is one of the best explanations of events in transition Russia. I think this book will find its audience among economic historians, students of comparative economics, and general economists, historians, and political scientists." Paul Gregory, University of Houston