Essential services are being privatised the world over. Whether it's water, gas, electricity or the phone network, everywher from Sao Paulo in Brazil to Leeds in the UK is following the US economic model and handing public services over to private companies whose principal interest is raising prices. Yet it's one of the world's best kept secrets that Americans pay astonishingly little for high quality public services. Uniquely in the world, every aspect of US regulation is wide open to the public. How is this done and why has this process not taken root elsewhere? How is regulation threatened even in the United States? And what power does the public have to ensure that services are regulated along these US lines?;This volume, based on work for the United Nations International Labour Organisation, is a step-by-step guide to the way that public services are regulated in the United States. It explains how decisions are made by public debate in a public forum. Profits and investments of private companies are capped, and companies are forced to reduce prices for the poor, fund environmental investments and open themselves to financial inspection.

Written to help school board members, administrators, parents, and other community residents involved in the privatization debate, this volume maintains a useful balance of scholarship and craft. It provides both theory and practice, presenting practical information to guide those who must deal with policy and procedural issues related to privatizing one or more school district functions.

"The world's most prominent radical scientist." The Guardian Vandana Shiva, a world-renowned environmentalist and campaigner, examines the 'water wars' of the twenty-first century: the aggressive privatization by the multinationals of communal water rights. While drought and desertification are intensifying around the world, corporations are aggressively converting free-flowing water into bottled profits. The water wars of the twenty-first century may match -- or even surpass -- the oil wars of the twentieth. In Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution and Profit, acclaimed author Vandana Shiva sheds light on the activists who are fighting corporate manoeuvres to convert this life-sustaining resource into more gold for the elites. In Water Wars, Shiva uses her remarkable knowledge of science and society to outline the emergence of corporate culture and the historical erosion of communal water rights. Using the international water trade and industrial activities such as damming, mining, and aquafarming as her lens, Shiva exposes the destruction of the earth and the disenfranchisement of the world's poor as they are stripped of rights to a precious common good. Shiva calls for a movement to preserve water access for all, and offers a blueprint for global resistance based on examples of successful campaigns.

Today, nearly all public services schools, hospitals, prisons, fire departments, sanitation are considered fair game for privatization. Proponents of privatization argue that private firms will respond to competitive market pressures and provide better service at lower cost. While this assertion has caused much controversy, the debate between both sides has consisted mainly of impassioned defenses of entrenched positions. In You Don't Always Get What You Pay For, Elliott D. Sclar offers a balanced look at the pitfalls and promises of public sector privatization in the United States. By describing the underlying economic dynamics of how public agencies and private organizations actually work together, he provides a rigorous analysis of the assumptions behind the case for privatization.The competitive-market model may seem appealing, but Sclar warns that it does not address the complex reality of contracting for government services. Using specific examples, such as mail service and urban transportation, he shows that ironically privatization does not shrink government the broader goal of many of its own champions. He also demonstrates that there is more to consider in providing public services than trying to achieve efficiency; there are issues of equity and access that cannot be ignored.Sclar believes that public officials and voters will soon realize the limitations of "contracting out" just as private corporations have come to understand the drawbacks of outsourcing. After examining the effectiveness of alternatives to privatization, he offers suggestions for improving public sector performance advice he hopes will be heeded before it is too late."

Providing therapists practical solutions to managed care's erosion of their freedom to practice, this book presents a working blueprint for a private-pay psychotherapy practice. Dana C. Ackley casts out the distortions that have crept into many clinicians' thinking as a result of reliance on third-party reimbursement. Based on his own experience, he shows how you can serve clients--and yourself--better by developing real alternatives to the pressures and bureaucracy of managed care. In clear step-by-step detail, including practical exercises and checklists, sample marketing materials, and payment plans, the volume shows you how to: *Rediscover the economic and clinical value of your work *Discard assumptions that might block your progress *Educate yourself about the needs of potential clients *Market and sell your services effectively *Learn ethical, reasonable business-of-practice skills *Diversify into the rewarding area of psychological consultation to businesses. No matter what your clinical style, theoretical orientation, or practice history, you will benefit from the hard-won lessons Dr. Ackley shares in this book.

From one of its leading international proponents comes this comprehensive, coherent guide to privatization -- its background, theory, and practical reality. In this new book, E.S. Savas explains --using a straightforward, all-inclusive approach --what, why, when, and how to privatize. Contracting services, using franchises and vouchers, divesting government-owned businesses, privatizing infrastructure through public-private partnerships, reforming education, privatizing the welfare state, and overcoming opposition to privatization are just some of the many aspects discussed in detail.

This book studies the effects of incorporating market incentives into the public goods arena. Carol Graham examines the effects of market-based strategies on the performance of public institutions, the political sustainability of market reforms, and equity. In so doing, she examines a variety of reform experiences in the realms of education, health, social security, and state- owned enterprises and across a range of country and income contexts, with case studies drawn from Latin America, Africa, and Eastern Europe.

The studies show that the incorporation of new market incentives, such as vouchers in education and private social security systems, can have positive effects on the performance of public institutions. The effects on equity are less clear, however, and in many cases efficiency gains entail short-term equity losses. The poorest sectors are usually least equipped to take advantage of new incentives and may be marginalized from the reforms and lose access to essential services. Yet in the long-term, negative equity effects are usually counter-balanced by the benefits of enhancing the performance of public institutions. As this book makes clear, the issues explored have relevance for advanced industrial societies as well as for developing economies.

This book makes public, for the first time, a full account of the development of the privatization of prisons, centred on the only full-scale empirical study yet to have been undertaken in Britain. After providing an up-to-date overview of the development of private sector involvement in penal practice in the United Kingdom, North America, Europe and Australia, the authors go on to describe the first two years in the life of Wolds Remand Prison - the first private prison in Britain. They look at the daily life for remand prisoners, assess the duties and morale of staff and compare the workings of Wolds to a new local prison in the public sector. The authors conclude by discussing some of the practical and theoretical issues to have emerged from contracting out, ethical issues surrounding the whole privatization debate and implications for the future of the prison system and penal policy.

This book makes public, for the first time, a full account of the development of the privatization of prisons, centred on the only full-scale empirical study yet to have been undertaken in Britain. After providing an up-to-date overview of the development of private sector involvement in penal practice in the United Kingdom, North America, Europe and Australia, the authors go on to describe the first two years in the life of Wolds Remand Prison - the first private prison in Britain. They look at the daily life for remand prisoners, assess the duties and morale of staff and compare the workings of Wolds to a new local prison in the public sector. The authors conclude by discussing some of the practical and theoretical issues to have emerged from contracting out, ethical issues surrounding the whole privatization debate and implications for the future of the prison system and penal policy.

The first book to describe Russia's massive economic transformation for an American audience, Kremlin Capitalism provides a wealth of data and analyses not previously available in this country. The authors articulate the political and economic goals of Russian privatization, examine the current ownership of the largest enterprises in Russia, and chart the serious problem of corporate governance in the new private businesses. Kremlin Capitalism is based on the only continuous study of Russian privatization throughout the Russian Federation from 1992 to the present. The authors tracked down the story of the transition in the cities, towns, and villages of fifty of Russia's eighty-nine provinces, updating their findings after the June 1996 election. The result is an up-to-the-minute report of the largest property transfer in history and an analysis of one of this century's most significant economic transformations. The volume also characterizes the position of workers in terms of unemployment, wages, union power, and their changing role as employee shareholders.What really happened when Russia privatized its economy? The Kremlin brokered the initial struggle among different interest groups eager to claim a portion of Russian property: workers, managers, the Mafia, the old Soviet bureaucracy, regular citizens, entrepreneurs, Russian banks, and foreigners. While competing with one another, all struggled to free themselves from seventy years of Communist economic culture. Four years after the process began, have large companies learned to offer goods and services profitably and pay dividends to shareholders? Individual stories come alive as the book explores problems Russians face in structuring a new economic system, defining the ownership and governance of thousands of corporations one by one. Russian economic practices are being forged in the heat of fierce political struggles between resurgent Communists and nationalists and old Soviet managers, on the one hand, and more liberal elements of its infant democratic system on the other. Whether a few big conglomerates and the powerful banks and holding companies from Soviet days will dominate the new Russian economy to the exclusion of most citizens remains to be seen.Many questions persist. How will billions of dollars of capital be raised to retool, restructure, and reorient the heart and soul of Russia's economy? Will open stock markets stimulate a new economic order or will that new order be imposed through strong state supports and subsidies? What role will be played by shadowy conglomerates that are trying to shape a disorganized economy into something resembling the old Soviet system? The authors note the paradox of a capitalism conceived, designed, implemented, and evaluated by the Kremlin when one aim of reform is to allow market forces to play freely. Kremlin Capitalism asks whether rapid privatization has catalyzed or complicated the transition to a more liberal political and economic system, a question that will reverberate for decades.

Privatisation is supposed to bring about the retreat of the state. But what happens when the state privatises itself and even its core functions - tax collection, internal security, customs - are auctioned to the highest bidder? Does this imply a weakening of the state? Or, rather, does it lead to a scrutiny and control? The contributors to this work examine these phenomena in the former "Second" and "Third World" (Central and Eastern Europe, China and other parts of Asia and Africa) highlighting the very different ways in which continuing state interference and privatisation are implemented. What we are witnessing, according to this study, is not the eclipse of the state under the impact of globalisation but the end of the relatively short era of the "development state" and its commanding role. privatisation does not necessarily lead to a weakening of state control; it leads to new, and often more informal, forms of interference and influence, and it is these that are the book's central theme.