The Financial Crisis and Varieties of Pension Privatization Reversals in Eastern Europe

Since the global financial crisis, those East European countries that had partly privatized their pension systems in the 1990s or early 2000s increasingly scaled back their mandatory private retirement accounts and restored the role of public provision. What explains this wave of reversals in pension privatization and variation in its outcomes? Proponents of pension privatization had argued that it would boost domestic capital markets and economic growth. By revealing how pension privatization helped increase sovereign debt and how large a part of pension funds' assets was invested in government bonds, the crisis strengthened the position of domestic opponents of mandatory private accounts. But these actors' capacity and determination to reverse pension privatization depended on the level of their country's public debt and on pension funds' portfolio structure. Empirically, the argument is supported with case studies of Hungarian, Polish, and Slovak pension reform.     

Explaining Privatization: Notes Towards a Predictive Theory

This article starts from the assumption that some of the theoretical work used to explain welfare-state expansion can be used 'in reverse' to explain privatization, here seen as welfare state contraction, i.e., the transfer from the public to the private sector of the responsibility for certain activities involved in welfare provision. To this end, valiants of the 'power resources' approach are examined. Finding that the 'labour movement' thesis does not have a strong predictive value, I then discuss the 'game theoretical' variant of the 'power resources' approach. Its usefulness for predicting privatization patterns seems limited because of the reductionism built into it. Following the neo-Institutionalists' argument that actor preferences and strategies both reflect and form institutional arrangements of the welfare state, some institutional typologies are developed which are relevant to the course and patterns of privatization. An ideal-type dichotomy between 'pluralist' and 'corporatist' institutions is discussed, in connection with a further delineation of decision-making, financing, and implementing structures. In conclusion, an effort is made to combine actor-oriented and institutional approaches to formulate some preliminary predictions about when and where certain patterns of privatization will occur.     

Privatization and the Courts: How Judicial Structures Shaped German Privatization

This article examines how legal institutional structures shaped the process of East German privatization by the Treuhandanstalt. It argues that the courts, as an important venue for oversight and accountability, were central to achieving the rapid and narrowly defined privatization carried out by the agency. Moreover, the experience of privatization after 1989 suggests the courts played a far more important role in shaping economic policy than one would have expected from traditional scholarship on public agencies, the courts, or the German legal system.     

Privatization as a Political Priority: The British Experience

This article challenges conventional approaches to Thatcher's privatization campaign in which privatization has been judged on the basis of its economic or public policy merits. The privatization programme of the Thatcher Government was driven by political objectives and thus it was more coherent than has been usually asserted. Politicians are motivated by maximizing their political benefits (power) rather than by the pursuit of the common good, that is optimal economic and public policies. Unlike some other papers who have considered the political aspects of the Conservative privatization programme, this paper introduces a distinction between what were the Conservatives' perceptions of the political consequences of privatization and the actual effect of this programme.     

The Measurement of Democracy: Towards a New Paradigm

Mainstream political science on democracy has been criticised for ‘regime bias’. This has led political scientists to draw on a narrow range of democratic theory that considers democratic potential only at the cost of ignoring democratic purpose, to ignore other units of observation than the regime, notably the individual citizen, and to overlook advances in measurement theory. A robust normative account of democratic quality, it is argued, should rest on three foundations. First, measurement should start with observations of the regime. No account of democratic quality should be considered valid without an account of the degree of democracy in the regime. This analysis should be grounded in standard democratic theory. Secondly, the measurement effort should follow through to observations of how the potential in the regime is manifested in the lives of citizens. No account of democratic quality should be considered valid without an account of how well the system delivers for citizens. This analysis should be grounded in a theory of the purpose of democracy. Thirdly, pronouncements on democratic quality should finally be made only from some combination or index of information from both systems analysis and individual analysis. That combined analysis should be grounded in measurement theory, specifically the law of methodological individualism and the principle of double book-keeping.     

Local Government Restructuring: Privatization and Its Alternatives

Local government restructuring should no longer be viewed as a simple dichotomy between private and public provision. A 1997 survey of chief elected township and county officials in New York shows that local governments use both private and public sector mechanisms to structure the market, create competition, and attain economies of scale. In addition to privatization and inter‐municipal cooperation, two alternative forms of service delivery not previously researched—reverse privatization and governmental entrepreneurship—are analyzed here. Logistic regression on the 201 responding governments differentiates the decision to restructure from the level and complexity of restructuring. Results confirm that local governments are guided primarily by pragmatic concerns with information, monitoring, and service quality. Political factors are not significant in the restructuring process and unionization is only significant in cases of simple restructuring (privatization or cooperation used alone). Fiscal stress is not a primary motivator, but debt limits are associated with more complex forms of restructuring. Restructuring service delivery requires capacity to take risks and is more common among experienced local officials in larger, higher‐income communities. Restructuring should be viewed as a complex, pragmatic process where governments combine public and private provision with an active role as service provider and market player. © 2001 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Reducing Government Involvement in a Market: Lessons from the Privatization of Sallie Mae

Government intervention shapes institutions and markets; even when government seeks to reduce its involvement, it must protect against resulting market distortions. Government provided substantial benefits to Sallie Mae as a government‐sponsored enterprise (GSE). Giving up GSE status allowed Sallie Mae to expand the scope of its financial services beyond restrictions of its GSE charter. Benefits of GSE status led to scale economies and low cost structure that now propel the company's dominance and growth as a non‐GSE. Lessons from Sallie Mae apply to removal of GSE status from other GSEs and to restructuring and deregulation in other economic sectors.     

Challenging Privatization: A Conceptual and Theoretical Argument

This is the second of a three-part polemic against the destruction of state owned enterprises in China (the first, “Against Privatization: A Historical and Empirical Argument”, is published in JCPS 13:1, 2008). It critically examines the ideology of privatization and argues for alternative guidelines of reform. The central contention is that a healthy market economy does not require domination of private property; rather it relies on apposite political-legal-ideological power and regulatory-monitoring regimes of accumulation and distribution socially legitimated within a given public culture. Rejecting the fallacies of ownership determinism and precision requirement on property rights for morality and efficiency, this essay clarifies distinction between the notion of exclusive properties and the vision of their socialized utility and management. Justifications for reforming state and private sectors alike in accordance with a unifying commons of social defense and feasibilities of innovative reform measures and policy proposals in that direction, will be elaborated in a third essay titled “Overcoming Privatization: A Strategic and Institutional Argument”.

Privatization of Municipal Wastewater Treatment

Privatization of wastewater treatment facilities was encouraged by changes in the law and in the attitude of government officials during the early 1980s The idea was for localities to benefit from the efficiency gains expected when operations were transferred from municipal administration to a profit-making organization. However, significant differences between the ideal and reality often existed, particularly when contracts all but eliminated the profit motive.     

逆向合同外包:国外民营化发展的新取向

20世纪90年代末以来,世界民营化发展开始转型,逆向合同外包的兴起成为目前世界民营化发展的新取向.逆向合同外包说明了公共服务提供的复杂性和动态性,它的兴起既是由于其新自由主义理论根基受到动摇,反映了西方国家由第一轮新公共管理改革向重新强调中央权力的第二轮改革转变的时代背景,也与民营化难以带来成本节省、服务质量下降、合同实施困难以及公共行政理论的转换等因素直接相关.深入分析逆向合同外包问题,有助于全面认识与把握民营化的发展态势,为科学推动我国民营化改革的发展提供借鉴.     

Privatization of public-sector services in practice: Experience and potential

Privatization—the transfer of assets and service responsibility from the public to the private sector—has been expanding at the state and local level. Empirical studies document significant cost savings, apparently due to incentives introduced by competition. The outlook is for continued expansion of privatization, including such areas as highways, transit, water supply, and education.     

Federal Goverment Credit Program: Privatization Through Loan Sales

Privatization by sale of governmental financial assets provides a means to achieve program goals but does not preclude continued policy involvement. By loan guarantees the government has already privatized some aspects of its credit programs. Issues raised by loan sales differ from those concerning capital assets.     

混合型模式是公交民营化改革的理性选择

新契约主义强调以契约合同为核心,但非完全市场化和民营化,而是竞争激励机制与公平民主机制相结合,以实现地方公共服务的有效供给.由于城市人口分布、消费水平、线路竞争度等客观因素的差异,使得我们不能在公交改革上简单地实行一刀切.在对公交民营化改革模式的安排上,不能单纯选择一种模式主导改革,而应综合北京和香港城市公交的做法,根据不同情况进行相应组合,灵活地实行公私合作的混合型模式.