Introduction

Social fragmentation and social conflict are widespread phenomena and seem to always accompany the onset of economic transformation. Countries that are now advanced and relatively peaceful were once also conflicted and fragmented, and much of the world has always remained fragmented and conflicted. The ideological and institutional attack by certain ideologues, policymakers, and politicians on the socio-economic roles of the state and public sector in the advanced west, in a manner and degree not seen since the pre-1940 era of laissez-faire, has come as the culmination of a growing trend towards marketization, anti-state ideology, economic neo-liberalization. The focus is, indeed, on taking a historical approach that, first, attempts to build from cases to try to reveal the complexity of the many transition paths that have resulted in the early 21st century in the large public/state sectors.