Conference papers deal with the institutional foundations of corporate control and the design of control mechanisms, including aspects of accounting and auditing. Economists, also New Institutional Economists, pay too little attention to the role of political forces in transformation processes. Privatization is not necessarily a cure-all. In some cases collective action on local levels may be preferable. Bringing the state back in, reinventing government, such have recently been slogans in US politics.
Opponents proclaim, in the light of globalization, the end of the nation state.
None of these statements is without a kernel of truth. But reassessing the proper scope of government presupposes more than repeating old normative battles. State of the art micro-economic theory, opening up the black box of the individual s preferences, putting government into a competitive framework, adding rational choice analysis from political sciences and constitutional law are all put together in order to paint a more timely and more appropriate picture.