What government activities should be contracted out to private companies? This thoughtful book by a Harvard policy analyst shuns global answers and explores how to examine individual cases.

An examination of privatization. This book deals with a variety of topics connected to this subject, including the characteristics of privatization alternatives, its applications in protective and human services, and problems which can occur with privatization.

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.

America’s commitment to public schooling once seemed unshakable. But today the movement to privatize K–12 education is stronger than ever. Samuel E. Abrams examines the rise of market forces in public education and reveals how a commercial mindset has taken over. “[An] outstanding book.” —Carol Burris, Washington Post “Given the near-complete absence of public information and debate about the stealth effort to privatize public schools, this is the right time for the appearance of [this book]. Samuel E. Abrams, a veteran teacher and administrator, has written an elegant analysis of the workings of market forces in education.” —Diane Ravitch, New York Review of Books “Education and the Commercial Mindset provides the most detailed and comprehensive analysis of the school privatization movement to date. Students of American education will learn a great deal from it.” —Leo Casey, Dissent

In this volume the leading scholars and practitioners in the field provide a comprehensive, in-depth examination of trends in privatization throughout the world. Focusing primarily on the experiences of seventeen countries--including developing countries, advanced industrial nations, and socialist states--the book explores theoretical approaches toward the issues inherent in privatization and deregulation, specifies techniques for successful privatization, and examines the cost-benefits and limits of privatization policies. The contributors then present a series of twenty detailed case studies which assess the actual problems and prospects associated with privatization and deregulation policy choices across varied sociopolitical systems and a range of economic sectors. The result is the most extensive comparative public policy analysis yet published on the subject of privatization and deregulation. Following an introductory overview which addresses the interaction between privatization, deregulation and market liberalization within both developed and developing country policy environments, the contributors discuss the philosophical bases of privatization policies, examine the seminal experiences of Britain and the United States, and identify factors responsible for successful privatization efforts. This is followed by case studies of privatization in such sectors as finance, transportation, health care, housing, and telecommunications around the world. After special sectoral studies of developing country finance, debt-equity conversions, and international air transport, the authors successively survey the experience of privatization in selected Latin American, Caribbean, West African and Asian developing nations; in the advanced industrial nations of Canada, France, New Zealand, and Sweden; and in the socialist countries of China, Hungary, and Poland. In their conclusion, the editors discuss the immediate implications of the contributors' findings and suggest research directions for the future. Numerous explanatory tables and figures are included, making this an ideal supplemental text for courses in business, government, and public policy.

The privatization of large state-owned enterprises is one of the most radical policy developments of the last quarter century. Right-wing governments have privatized in an effort to decrease the size of government, while left-wing governments have privatized either to compensate for the failures of state-owned firms or to generate revenues. In this way, privatization has spread from Europe to Latin America, from Asia to Africa, reaching its zenith with Central and Eastern Europe's transition from socialism to capitalism. In many countries state ownership has been an important tool in bringing cheap water, energy, and transport to poorer segments of the population. In other instances, it has sponsored aggressive cutbacks, corruption, and cronyism. Privatization: Successes and Failures evaluates the practices and results of privatization in Eastern Europe, Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Featuring the world's leading economists and experts on privatization, this volume offers a broad and balanced analysis of specific privatization projects and uncovers some surprising trends. Partial privatization, for example, tends to be more widespread than one might think, and the effects of privatization on efficiency are generally mixed but rarely negative. Also, while privatization appears uncontroversial in competitive sectors, it becomes increasingly complex in more monopolistic sectors where good regulation is crucial. Privatization concludes with alternative frameworks for countries in Africa and other regions that seek to develop privatization policy and programs.

Electricity, natural gas, telecommunications, railways, and water supply, are often vertically and horizontally integrated state monopolies. This results in weak services, especially in developing and transition economies, and for poor people. Common problems include low productivity, high costs, bad quality, insufficient revenue, and investment shortfalls. Many countries over the past two decades have restructured, privatized and regulated their infrastructure. This report identifies the challenges involved in this massive policy redirection. It also assesses the outcomes of these changes, as well as their distributional consequences for poor households and other disadvantaged groups. It recommends directions for future reforms and research to improve infrastructure performance, identifying pricing policies that strike a balance between economic efficiency and social equity, suggesting rules governing access to bottleneck infrastructure facilities, and proposing ways to increase poor people's access to these crucial services.

Governance, as defined by the World Bank in its 1992 report, Governance and Development, is the manner in which power is exercised in the management of a country's economic and social resources for development. The report deemed it is within the Bank's mandate to focus on the following: -the process by which authority is exercised in the management of a country's economic and social resources -the capacity of governments to design, formulate, and implement policies and discharge functions. Also available: Governance: The World Bank's Experience (ISBN 0-8213-2804-2) Stock No. 12804.

From the 1980s on, a privatization of labour market-related risks has occurred in the OECD. Governments have cut the generosity of social programs and tightened eligibility rules, particularly for the unemployed. The book analyses these curtailments for eighteen countries over the course of four decades and provides an encompassing comparative assessment of the interactive impact of government ideology and economic pressure. It demonstrates that the economic worldviews of governments are the most important factor in explaining why cuts are implemented or not. While ideas of non-intervention in the market underlie cuts in generosity, ideas of equality and fairness are at the heart of stricter eligibility criteria. The book also shows that the impact of the economic pressures often held responsible for the marginalization of politics and government ideology is in fact conditional on the specific ideological configuration.