Privatizing The State (the Ceri Series In Comparative Politics And International Studies)

"This book challenges received ideas about the process of globalization and its presumed homogenization by suggesting that rather than weakening the powers of the state, privatization actually strengthens it. With examples from Russia, Poland, China, Taiwan, Indonesia, North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa, the book questions the supposed inefficiency of states in regulating capitalism and the role economic and financial knowledge play as substitutes for political and social analysis."--Jacket. Read more...

In the new global political economy, "privatization" names a transformation of the roles of public and private actors with the goal of reforming government policies and economic aid programs. It is an objective, a slogan, a fetish. But what does it signify? On the one hand, it refers to the process of changing industries, businesses, and services from governmental or public ownership to private agencies. But privatization now also extends to what are normally the prerogatives of national states: taxation, customs, internal security, national defense, and peace negotiations. In much of the literature, privatization is associated with the retreat, decline, or even demise of the state.

Using Max Weber's concept of delegation, or "discharge," as a point of departure, Hibou and the contributors of this volume propose an alternative view, interpreting the contemporary restructuring of economic and political relations in much of the world as "the privatization of the state." This book challenges received ideas about the process of globalization and its presumed homogenization by suggesting that rather than weakening the powers of the state, privatization actually strengthens it. With examples from Russia, Poland, China, Taiwan, Indonesia, North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa, the book questions the supposed inefficiency of states in regulating capitalism and the role economic and financial knowledge play as substitutes for political and social analysis.

Columbia University Press

From privatising the economy to privatising the state: an analysis of the continual formation of the state / Béatrice Hibou -- From corruption to regulation: post-communist enterprises in Poland / François Bafoil -- Shenyang, privatisation in the vanguard of Chinese socialism / Antoine Kernen -- The privatisation of sovereignty and the survival of weak states / William Reno -- Power is not sovereign: the pluralisation of economic regulatory authority in the Chad basin / Janet Roitman -- A pretence of privatisation: Taiwan's external relations / Françoise Mengin -- Is China becoming an ordinary state? / Jean-Louis Rocca -- Privatisation and political change in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia / Gilles Favarel-Garrigues -- 'Asal bapak senang' (as long as it please the master): the pastoral idea and privatisation of the state in Indonesia / Romain Bertrand -- Postface: privatisation and the historical paths of the political / Yves Chevrier. "This book challenges received ideas about the process of globalization and its presumed homogenization by suggesting that rather than weakening the powers of the state, privatization actually strengthens it. With examples from Russia, Poland, China, Taiwan, Indonesia, North Africa, and sub-Saharan Africa, the book questions the supposed inefficiency of states in regulating capitalism and the role economic and financial knowledge play as substitutes for political and social analysis."--BOOK JACKET. Using Max Weber's concept of delegation, or "discharge," as a point of departure, this book proposes an alternative view, interpreting the contemporary restructuring of economic and political relations in much of the world as "the privatization of the state". It challenges the ideas about the process of globalization. Today analyses of economic globalisation or internationalisation observe that the ways in which the state intervenes in the economy have changed.