Managerial Strategies for Spontaneous Privatization

Two Western economists examine the rapid changes in property and business forms of enterprises in the former Soviet Union using evidence from intensive interviews conducted through December 1991 and involving 80 industrial and commercial organizations. After reviewing the reforms that provided the legal basis for the process, they describe different managerial strategies employed in spontaneous privatization and examine the ensuing changes in contractual relations of firms with other entities such as ministries or banks. The authors also interpret spontaneous privatization on the basis of literature covering property rights and identify several groups that lose or derive benefits from the transformation. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: P20, L2.     

Law as the articulation of the state in Western Germany: A German tradition seen from a British perspective

The main purpose of this paper is to consider why in the Federal Republic of Germany legal categories are still so important in expressing what is understood by ‘the State’. This discussion is not, however, pursued solely in terms of concepts and traditions derived from German legal and political experience. Nor is the matter looked at just within the German context. There is in addition an attempt to look at the problem of law and the state in the Federal Republic against the background both of English legal theories and of contemporary arguments in Britain about constitutional issues. Thus what is offered is also a modest exercise in comparative political analysis.     

A conversation with former DCI William E. Colby: Spymaster during the ‘Year of the Intelligence Wars’

In this previously unpublished interview, William Colby, former US Director of Central Intelligence, discusses the Intelligence Community's relationships with Congress and the White House, the value and conditions for effective human intelligence, the challenges of managing the Central Intelligence Agency, and his experience leading the Agency during the domestic spying scandals of the 1970s. Colby argues that the attentiveness of congressional intelligence committees waxes and wanes, just as it does for any other oversight committee. He states that Congress and the press, along with the integrity and initiative of individual citizens working in the intelligence community, provide the strongest guards against abuse. The interview was conducted in 1991, the last year of the Cold War.