Everyday life in China is increasingly shaped by a novel mix of neoliberal and socialist elements, of individual choices and state objectives. This combination of self-determination and socialism from afar has incited profound changes in the ways individuals think and act in different spheres of society. Covering a vast range of daily life from homeowner organizations and the users of Internet cafes to self-directed professionals and informed consumers the essays in Privatizing China create a compelling picture of the burgeoning awareness of self-governing within the postsocialist context.

The introduction by Aihwa Ong and Li Zhang presents assemblage as a concept for studying China as a unique postsocialist society created through interactions with global forms. The authors conduct their ethnographic fieldwork in a spectrum of domains family, community, real estate, business, taxation, politics, labor, health, professions, religion, and consumption that are infiltrated by new techniques of the self and yet also regulated by broader socialist norms. Privatizing China gives readers a grounded, fine-grained intimacy with the variety and complexity of everyday conduct in China's turbulent transformation."

Although China's centrally planned economy is a little more than a shadow of its former self, the closely inter-linked reforms of the enterprise and banking sectors are still incomplete. The relative size of the state-owned enterprise sector has been much reduced, however, the sector remains the dominant borrower from the banking system and is responsible for the majority of bank non-performing assets. Thus in the interests of financial stability it is crucial to implement the remaining reform agenda. The accession to the WTO has also made it more urgent for China's most-dynamic state-owned enterprises and her banking industry to compete through innovation, continuing process upgrades, and active pursuit of strategies aimed at succeeding in global markets. In order to do so, not only do large state-owned industrial enterprises need to be privatized, but the government also needs to create the conditions that will result in market determined consolidation of small and medium size firms into entities with a core strength. 'Under New Ownership' explores the effects of ownership reform in China on the performance of reformed industrial state-owned enterprises, and proposes privatization as a course of action to truly transform these enterprises into world class firms which compete on the basis of sound strategy, effective organization, and innovation. It draws upon newly collected firm level survey data to assess changes in the ownership structure of state enterprises on management, governance, innovation, and performance relative to other types of firms in China. This title provides researchers, students, and policymakers interested in the Chinese economy with in depth information and analysis on key issues related to the reform of state-owned enterprises.

Throughout the 1990's, privatization of inefficient state-owned enterprises was strongly embraced in developing and transitional economies. Little attention has gone to the distributional implications of the privatization movement, a particularly surprising oversight given the current backlash in many settings against further privatization. This book offers a comprehensive set of country-specific studies on the effects of privatization on people --winners and losers in different income, employment, and education groups. The studies analyze the changes in public tax revenue from privatized enterprises, shifts in pension and other liabilities, and changes in income of different groups. Contributors include David McKenzie (Stanford University), Dilip Mookherjee (Boston University), Gover Barja (Universidad Cat?lica Boliviana, La Paz), Miguel Urquiola (Columbia University), Samuel Freije (Universidad de Las Am?ricas in Puebla, Mexico), Luis A. Rivas (Ministry of Finance and Central Bank of Nicaragua), M?ximo Torero, Enrique Schroth, and Alberto Pasco Font (Group of Analysis for Development GRADE], Lima), Roberto Macedo (University of Sao Paulo, Presbyterian Mackenzie University, and Foundation Institute of Economic Research, Sao Paolo), Antonio Estache (World Bank), Michael Bleyzer and Edi Segura (SigmaBleyzer Corporation), Gary H. Jefferson, (Brandeis University), Su Jian (Brandeis and Peking Universities), Jiang Yuan and Yu Xinhua (National Bureau of Statistics, Beijing), and Malathy Knight-John and P.P.A. Wasantha (Institute of Policy Studies, Sri Lanka).

Privatization - the transfer of responsibility for public services from the public to the private sector - currently evokes intense interest from policy makers. To its advocates, privatization conjures up visions of a lean, streamlined public sector reliant upon the private market-place for the delivery of public services. To opponents, it conjures up visions of a beleaguered government bureaucracy ceding vital public services to unreliable entrepreneurs. At best, privatization can reduce the costs of government and introduce new possibilities for the better delivery of services. At worst, it may undermine equity, quality, and accountability. In this book, scholars from several social science disciplines evaluate privatization efforts in the United States and abroad, and at different levels of government: federal, state, and local. They look primarily at three important policy areas - education, housing, and law enforcement - that sharply illustrate the dilemmas facing policy makers as the debate about privatization shifts from the delivery of ""hard"" services, such as refuse collection, to human services. Contributors have very different perspectives: some are enthusiastic about privatization, others are very skeptical indeed. None of these papers has been published elsewhere; the volume developed from a 1987 conference on privatization sponsored by the La Follette Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A strength of this collection lies in its consideration of alternative forms of service delivery. The privatization of public housing, for instance, may involve subsidies to the poor (vouchers), tenant management (a hybrid form of privatization), or outright sale. How, and how well, have such policies worked? Examples from other countries may prove especially enlightening: the English sale of public housing to tenants is one of the largest asset sales in the entire privatization movement; Australia has experimented with the privatization of law enforcement and corrections. These issues are the subject of lively public debate in the United States today and are discussed at length in this volume. ""Privatization and its Alternatives"" speaks not only to scholars of public policy but also to a wide range of practitioners who must decide whether or how to privatize.

Over the years, the term 'private sector development' has been misunderstood and misconstrued-variously vilified and sanctified. During the decade of the 1990s, the role of the private sector in economic development received increasing attention, with controversy surrounding such issues as privatization and corporate scandals. 'The Private Sector in Development: Entrepreneurship, Regulation, and Competitive Disciplines' provides the first comprehensive treatment of the topic. Central to the discussion is the design of public policy that promotes an appropriate balance between competition and regulation. This book places special emphasis on the means by which private initiative is channeled into socially useful directions, particularly job creation and basic service delivery for good people. Finally, there is discussion of the implications of private sector involvement for policies of development institutions. Written principally for policy makers and their advisers, 'The Private Sector in Development' thoroughly explores the challenges inherent in creating public policy that encourages and enhances the development role of the private sector.

"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."

Today, nearly all public services -- from schools and hospitals to prisons, fire departments, and sanitation -- are considered fair game for privatization. Proponents argue that private firms responding to competitive market pressures will provide better service at lower cost. While this assertion has caused much controversy, the debate has consisted mainly of impassioned defenses of entrenched positions on all sides.

You Don't Always Get What You Pay For changes the contours of this debate. Elliott D. Sclar offers a balanced look at the pitfalls and promises of public sector privatization in the United States. 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, in an ironic twist, 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 these services than trying to achieve efficiency; there are issues such as equity and access that cannot be ignored.

Capitalism has long been idealized as a symbol of success, power, and free enterprise. In reality, while capitalism has brought wealth and success to some people, many others are rapidly losing opportunities to make a living as globalization transfers more and more control over local resources to distant powers. Today there is a growing sense that something is wrong with a system that treats people as mere components of the production process, focusing on efficiency to such extremes that services to citizens of even wealthy nations are neglected. The eleven anthropologists, economists, and researchers represented in this volume address this disparity of global capitalism and offer surprising solutions to the present effects of the burgeoning "global marketplace" on some of today's struggling communities. The essays, ranging in subject matter from the preservation of traditional fishing communities in New England to the effects of NAFTA, emphasize the need to reestablish grassroots development and locally focused use of resources and champion the concerns of contemporary poor and working-class people. In its consideration of possible alternatives to the profoundly damaging effects of uncontrolled global capitalism, "Communities and Capital" offers a new perspective that balances the power and success of capitalism with a recognition of its costs.

This volume explains why there is bipartisan interest in US privatisation of public housing and how it can be accomplished.

For a variety of reasons market-oriented improvement efforts are becoming increasingly visible on the educational reform landscape. In particular, privatization strategies, such as vouchers and contracting out, are receiving considerable attention at all levels of educational governance and administration. Our objective in this volume is to help the educational community develop a deeper understanding of the privatization movement in general and the major pathways to privatization in particular.

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.

This text argues that private contracts would allow for more and genuine consumer choice, based on real differences between competing health plans in content, mixture and cost of services. It further argues that contracts would establish set standards and obligations for all parties.

An in-depth analysis of the impact of public utility privatization on ordinary consumers. This text traces the history of energy and water privatization and documents the community and consumer sectors' various attempts to influence the structure of privatization and regulation. It provides data on the energy and water utilities over the first period of privatization and shows that the benefits and costs of privatization have not been shared equally. Low income consumers have been particularly adversly affected and the regressive outcomes of privatization have undercut the gains that domestic comsumers have made in some areas of service provision. Concluding with an overview of the British experiment of energy and water privatization, the author argues that the privatization settlements reached by successive Conservative governments with the privatized utility companies are seriously flawed, and that the British model of privatization is inappropriate to the domain of essential public utility service.

"This book is a highly valuable contribution to the current debate on how to achieve stabilization and structural adjustment programs in the Middle East presenting widely differing country profiles." Digest of Middle East Studies

"This book is an excellent collection of ten country case-studies by well-known Middle East political scientists... " MESA Bulletin

..". a highly original and valuable contribution on an important and most timely topic.... combines clarity of focus and breadth of geographic coverage." Robert Bianchi

International specialists take stock of the problems and prospects for privatization of state-run economies and other liberalization efforts throughout the Middle East and North Africa."

Much has been written about the current trend toward privatization of public enterprises. Selling Public Enterprises is the first book, however, to use economic logic to develop a quantitative approach to making divestiture decisions. Using the standard tools of applied microeconomics, the authors propose a method of valuing state-owned firms both before and after divestiture by the government. Their valuation method offers significant advantages over those commonly in use (such as book value of assets) and can provide governments with a reliable means of evaluating the costs and benefits of reforming state-owned enterprise policies and procedures.Selling Public Enterprises focuses on the pivotal questions of whether the enterprise should be sold, to whom should it be sold, and at what price. It identifies the social value of the enterprise under continued government operation, the social value under private operation, and the private value under private operation as being critical in determining the answers to these questions. In each case "social value" indicates the economic promise of such a venture to both households and firms of the country involved.The authors take up such topics as shadow pricing, the basic framework of welfare aggregation, the valuation of public income, private income and investment income, base flows and stocks, and the effect of sale prices on public and private values. They discuss the possibility of synergies and strategic behavior and present both a valuation algorithm and a sensitivity analysis. In the concluding chapters they address distributional realities and describe various dimensions of divestiture policy such as lifting constraints on enterprise behavior, improving the net benefit of divestiture, and coping with political constraints.The authors all teach at Boston University. Leroy Jones and Ingo Vogelsang are Professors of Economics and Pankaj Tandon is Associate Professor of Economics.

What government activities should be contracted out to private companies? This thoughtful book by a Harvard policy analyst shuns global answers and explores how to examine individual cases.

The electricity market has experienced enormous setbacks in delivering on the promise of deregulation. In theory, deregulating the electricity market would increase the efficiency of the industry by producing electricity at lower costs and passing those cost savings on to customers. However, deregulation poses substantial risks if the market is not designed properly, as the recent California crisis demonstrated. As "Electricity Deregulation "shows, successful deregulation is possible, although it is by no means a hands-off process--in fact, it requires a substantial amount of design and regulatory oversight.
This collection brings together leading experts from academia, government, and big business to discuss the lessons learned from experiences such as California's market meltdown as well as the ill-conceived policy choices that contribute to such failures. More importantly, the essays that comprise "Electricity Deregulation" offer a number of innovative prescriptions for the successful design of deregulated electricity markets. Written with economists and professionals associated with each of the network industries in mind, this comprehensive volume provides a timely and astute deliberation on the many risks and rewards of electricity deregulation.

How do we provide effective public services in a deeply neoliberal world? In the wake of the widespread failure of privatisation efforts, societies in the global south are increasingly seeking progressive ways of recreating the public sector. With contributors ranging from cutting-edge scholars to activists working in health, water, and energy provision, and with case studies covering a broad spectrum of localities and actors, Making Public in a Privatized World uncovers the radically different ways in which public services are being reshaped from the grassroots up. From communities holding the state accountable for public health in rural Guatemala, to waste pickers in India and decentralized solar electricity initiatives in Africa, the essays in this collection offer probing insights into the complex ways in which people are building genuine alternatives to privatization, while also illustrating the challenges which communities face in creating public services which are not subordinated to the logic of the market, or to the monolithic state entities of the past.

How do we provide effective public services in a deeply neoliberal world? In the wake of the widespread failure of privatisation efforts, societies in the global south are increasingly seeking progressive ways of recreating the public sector. With contributors ranging from cutting-edge scholars to activists working in health, water, and energy provision, and with case studies covering a broad spectrum of localities and actors, Making Public in a Privatized World uncovers the radically different ways in which public services are being reshaped from the grassroots up. From communities holding the state accountable for public health in rural Guatemala, to waste pickers in India and decentralized solar electricity initiatives in Africa, the essays in this collection offer probing insights into the complex ways in which people are building genuine alternatives to privatization, while also illustrating the challenges which communities face in creating public services which are not subordinated to the logic of the market, or to the monolithic state entities of the past.

In Privatization in the City, E .S. Savas comprehensively examines the evolution and implementation of former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's aggressive privatization program in the face of a city council generally hostile to privatization. Savas identifies, examines, evaluates, and documents all forms of privatization employed, including contracting, competitive sourcing, divestment, leases, vouchers, franchises, default, withdrawal, and voluntarism. He contrasts these efforts in New York with privatization in several other cities across the country, ranging from Indianapolis to Phoenix. After analyzing the costs and benefits-both quantitative and qualitative-of New York's privatization program, Savas concludes that significant savings were achieved during Giuliani's eight years in office.

Beginning in 1983, the Mexican government implemented one of the most extensive programs of market-oriented reform in the developing world. Downsizing the State examines a key element of this reform program: the privatization of public firms.

Drawing upon interviews with government officials, business executives, and labor leaders as well as data from government archives and corporate documents, MacLeod highlights the difficulties of linking market reforms to improved public welfare. Privatization failed to live up to its promise of raising living standards or decentralizing the economy. Indeed, privatization actually increased the concentration of wealth in Mexico while redirecting the economy toward foreign markets. These findings contribute to theoretical debates regarding state autonomy and the embeddedness of economic action.

MacLeod calls into question the autonomy of the Mexican state in its privatization program. He shows that the creation of markets where public firms once dominated has involved both the destruction of social relations and the construction of new relations and institutions to regulate the market.

This book challenges readers to consider the consequences of commercialism and business influences on and in schools. Critical essays examine the central theme of commercialism via a unique multiplicity of real-world examples. Topics include: *privatization of school food services; *oil company ads that act as educational policy statements; *a parent's view of his child's experiences in a school that encourages school-business partnerships; *commercialization and school administration; *teacher union involvement in the school-business partnership craze currently sweeping the nation; *links between education policy and the military-industrial complex; *commercialism in higher education, including marketing to high school students, intellectual property rights of professors and students, and the bind in which professional proprietary schools find themselves; and *the influence of conservative think tanks on information citizens receive, especially concerning educational issues and policy. Schools or Markets?: Commercialism, Privatization, and School-Business Partnerships is compelling reading for all researchers, faculty, students, and education professionals interested in the connections between public schools and private interests. The breadth and variety of topics addressed make it a uniquely relevant text for courses in social and cultural foundations of education, sociology of education, educational politics and policy, economics of education, philosophy of education, introduction to education, and cultural studies in education.