Working papers
PRIVATIZATION OLD AND NEW: STYLIZED NARRATIVES VERSUS CHANGING REALITIES OF THE FIRM, THE PROFIT MOTIVE AND THE STATE
Despite the changing nature of privatization in practice, privatization has typically been justified with reference to a singular stylised story about the public and private sector and how each operates: the efficient but cut-throat world of private profits contrasted with the more systematic but lumbering public sector. Yet, whilst certain discourses display remarkable continuity over time, the nature of contemporary capitalism, and the state’s role within it, have undergone remarkable changes. My contention in this paper is that this stylised narrative, and its associated imaginaries, is a poor model for how private firms actually operate, and thus is misleading as a basis for debates about the benefits and costs of privatization. I take inspiration from Chiara Cordelli in The Privatised State (2020, 4) where she observes “when it gets down to it then, government today is not what many intuitively think it is.” Just as Cordelli seeks to highlight the discrepancy between popular notions of the state, in this paper I extend this process of de-familiarising to the private sector, both the firm and the profit motive. By roughly dividing the practice of privatization into phase one, ranging the late 1970s to early 2000s, which emphasised state divestiture and phase two, which champions public-private partnerships and spans from the early 1990s to today, this paper foregrounds key shifts in the conceptualisation of the public and private sector, and the realities of states and markets under changing conditions of capitalism.
Presented at the Political Studies Association Conference hosted by Queen's Belfast on 30th March 2021 and at the Development Studies Association conference, hosted by UEA on Thursday 1st July 2021.
Despite the changing nature of privatization in practice, privatization has typically been justified with reference to a singular stylised story about the public and private sector and how each operates: the efficient but cut-throat world of private profits contrasted with the more systematic but lumbering public sector. Yet, whilst certain discourses display remarkable continuity over time, the nature of contemporary capitalism, and the state’s role within it, have undergone remarkable changes. My contention in this paper is that this stylised narrative, and its associated imaginaries, is a poor model for how private firms actually operate, and thus is misleading as a basis for debates about the benefits and costs of privatization. I take inspiration from Chiara Cordelli in The Privatised State (2020, 4) where she observes “when it gets down to it then, government today is not what many intuitively think it is.” Just as Cordelli seeks to highlight the discrepancy between popular notions of the state, in this paper I extend this process of de-familiarising to the private sector, both the firm and the profit motive. By roughly dividing the practice of privatization into phase one, ranging the late 1970s to early 2000s, which emphasised state divestiture and phase two, which champions public-private partnerships and spans from the early 1990s to today, this paper foregrounds key shifts in the conceptualisation of the public and private sector, and the realities of states and markets under changing conditions of capitalism.
Presented at the Political Studies Association Conference hosted by Queen's Belfast on 30th March 2021 and at the Development Studies Association conference, hosted by UEA on Thursday 1st July 2021.