Shrinking the State: The Political Underpinnings of Privatization / Edition 1

by Harvey Feigenbaum, Jeffrey Henig, Chris Hamnett

Overview

Privatization has spread worldwide during the 1980s and 1990s, reshaping the balance between state and market in many countries. This book provides a comparative political analysis of privatization in the UK, United States and France. The authors argue that privatization is a political phenomenon and should be analyzed as such, rather than as an economic response to the growth of the state and the cost of state provision. The book will be of interest to students of politics, economics, public policy and business studies, as well as to policy-makers and business consultants.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521639187
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	11/13/1998
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	6.06(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.55(d)

Table of Contents

1. Privatization and theories of state growth; 2. The political underpinnings of privatization; 3. The UK: 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.

Editorial Reviews

"...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

From the Publisher