Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Privatization and theories of state growth
- 2 The political underpinnings of privatization
- 3 The United Kingdom: from pragmatic to systemic privatization
- 4 France: from pragmatic to tactical privatization
- 5 The United States: the co-optation of pragmatic initiatives by agents of systemic change
- 6 The boundaries of privatization
- Index
3 - The United Kingdom: from pragmatic to systemic privatization
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 March 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Privatization and theories of state growth
- 2 The political underpinnings of privatization
- 3 The United Kingdom: from pragmatic to systemic privatization
- 4 France: from pragmatic to tactical privatization
- 5 The United States: the co-optation of pragmatic initiatives by agents of systemic change
- 6 The boundaries of privatization
- Index
Summary
Introduction
Privatization as a political movement is traced by most analysts to the United Kingdom., and was inaugurated under the stewardship of Margaret Thatcher. Certainly, disparate policies which fit the broad brush notion of “privatization” elaborated in chapter I took place earlier; in particular when the 1951 Conservative government retracted several of Labour's nationalizations. In scale, of course, the privatizations of the 1980s and 1990s dwarf all earlier asset sales. In addition to the sale of high-profile state owned corporations, other forms of privatization, including contracting out, were associated with the Thatcher governments.
However, the dominant legacy greeting the Conservative government of 1979 was a very large public sector which had been criticized for some time for its inefficiency, growing deficits, and troubled workforce.1 It was, in the end, the rash of public sector strikes during the 1978/9 “Winter of Discontent” which ushered in the first Thatcher government. Thus the British case is distinguishable from the other two major cases in this book by several aspects of its policy legacy. Britain had a larger public sector than the United States, and thus had more to privatize. The French public sector, which more closely resembled the UK in size, did not mirror the latter's performance. French public firms by and large had the reputation of efficient operation and exemplary labor relations.
In retrospect, it may seem natural that the birth and driving logic of privatization would be located in the British experience. This, however, is not the case.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Shrinking the StateThe Political Underpinnings of Privatization, pp. 59 - 86Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998
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