Index and bibliographical references included.

The six studies in this volume represent investigations into aspects of the management of government enterprise. For the most part the concern is with those governmental units or agencies that provide products having nongovernmental counterparts. In each case the enterprise is taken as given, and there is no attempt to justify the participation of government in the production of goods. Instead, these studies attempt to define the positions and the functions of the decision makers, to evaluate product and pricing decisions and to specify appropriate mechanisms for providing the adequate and timely information required for efficient control. The first two studies examine the managerial role. James Suarez defines an enviornment in which the typical public or private sector classification does not apply. Given the monopsonistic position of the government in the armaments market, many managerial marketing decisions are not available to private firms. Thus the objectives of the participants in this market appear to be confounded. Suarez investigates this interdependent relationship. 8 STUDIES IN THE MANAGEMENT OF GOVERNMENT ENTERPRISE In "A First Approach to the Economic Theory of College Management," Barry Bressler addresses the problem of resource allocation within the college establishment. Bressler draws on utility theory to define the manager's objective function and on the imposed budget reductions suffered by units of the City University of New York to suggest some of the implications of this managerial construct. The third and fourth papers concentrate on the products of two government enterprises.

War--or the threat of war--usually strengthens states as governments tax, draft soldiers, exert control over industrial production, and dampen internal dissent in order to build military might. The United States, however, was founded on the suspicion of state power, a suspicion that continued to gird its institutional architecture and inform the sentiments of many of its politicians and citizens through the twentieth century. In this comprehensive rethinking of postwar political history, Aaron Friedberg convincingly argues that such anti-statist inclinations prevented Cold War anxieties from transforming the United States into the garrison state it might have become in their absence. Drawing on an array of primary and secondary sources, including newly available archival materials, Friedberg concludes that the "weakness" of the American state served as a profound source of national strength that allowed the United States to outperform and outlast its supremely centralized and statist rival: the Soviet Union. Friedberg's analysis of the U. S. government's approach to taxation, conscription, industrial planning, scientific research and development, and armaments manufacturing reveals that the American state did expand during the early Cold War period. But domestic constraints on its expansion--including those stemming from mean self-interest as well as those guided by a principled belief in the virtues of limiting federal power--protected economic vitality, technological superiority, and public support for Cold War activities. The strategic synthesis that emerged by the early 1960s was functional as well as stable, enabling the United States to deter, contain, and ultimately outlive the Soviet Union precisely because the American state did not limit unduly the political, personal, and economic freedom of its citizens. Political scientists, historians, and general readers interested in Cold War history will value this thoroughly researched volume. Friedberg's insightful scholarship will also inspire future policy by contributing to our understanding of how liberal democracy's inherent qualities nurture its survival and spread.