ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to elucidate some broad aspects of the law of public enterprise. Public enterprise is necessary to achieve some key social and economic purposes; it is necessary because of market imperfections. In most countries, problems of the public sector are discussed primarily as if the heart of the matter was the appropriate division of responsibility between the government and the enterprise; in other words, the problem of control and autonomy. The result is often that there are swings back and forth between a high degree of control and a high degree of autonomy. Few national systems have an adequate system for monitoring the public sector and for evaluating its performance. The public sector has been used extensively as a form of patronage, as a device to channel resources to the ruling political party, to build the economic base of the political leaders.
