Privatization the transfer of responsibility for public services from the public to the private sector currently evokes intense interest from policy makers. To its advocates, privatization conjures up visions of a lean, streamlined public sector reliant upon the private marketplace for the delivery of public services. To opponents, it conjures up visions of a beleaguered government bureaucracy ceding vital public services to unreliable entrepreneurs. At best, privatization can reduce the costs of government and introduce new possibilities for the better delivery of services. At worst, it may...

"The Rise of the Entrepreneurial State" charts the development of state and local government initiatives to influence the market and strengthen economic development policies. This trend marked a decisive break from governments' traditionally small role in the affairs of private industry that defined the relationship between the public and private sector for the first half of the twentieth century. The turn to state and local government intervention signaled a change in subnational politics that, in many ways, transcended partisan politics, regional distinctions, and racial alliances.
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Modeled after Wisconsin's own unemployment compensation plan in the 1930s, federal unemployment insurance has long been considered one of the most important public policy achievements of the New Deal. Always paying benefits according to legislative and administrative guidelines and never requiring a taxpayer bailout, the program has nonetheless undergone strains induced by structural changes in both the economy and the prevailing political milieu. An outgrowth of a conference to celebrate the program's fiftieth anniversary, the papers collected in this volume describe the history of the...