The war‐making state and privatisation

States, created with the central purpose of defending national independence, resist the process of macro‐economic reform since it appears to limit their power to pursue this aim. The states of the former Centrally Planned Economies were marked out by their extreme subordination to the military drive, so the resistance to reshaping the ‘war‐making state’ into a ‘market‐facilitating state’ is considerable. The transition tends to be halted where the old structures of central control are ended without markets supplying alternative imperatives — a ‘rent‐seeking state’ is created. These themes are examined in relationship to privatisation of state owned enterprises in four countries: Russia, China, Vietnam and the Ukraine.