Shrinking the State: The Political Underpinnings of Privatization

Description

Privatization has spread worldwide during the 1980s and 1990s, and has significantly reshaped the balance between state and market in many countries. This book provides a comparative political analysis of the development, form, character and causes of privatization in three countries: the UK, USA and France. The authors argue that privatization is a political phenomenon and should be analyzed as such, rather than being seen as an economic response to the growth of the state and the cost of state provision. Privatization frequently has explicit political goals, and has consequences which redistribute costs and benefits to different groups. The book presents a threefold typology of privatization policy - pragmatic, tactical and systemic - and relates it to the experiences of USA, France and UK respectively. It will be of interest to students and scholars of politics, economics, public policy and business studies, as well as policy-makers and consultants in the field of privatization.

"...Shrinking the State will stand as a model of the way careful comparative theoretical and empirical work can shed new light on an important contemporary debate, and cut through the easy assumptions of conventional thinking. It will be of interest to students and scholars in politics, economics, and a number of other social sciences, and will be required reading in my graduate comparative politics seminar." Review of Radical Political Economics