RIVAL EXPLANATIONS OF PUBLIC OWNERSHIP, ITS FAILURE AND PRIVATIZATION

This article contrasts three types of explanation of three events – the initial nationalization of many British industries, mainly in the 1940s, the failure of most nationalized industries to be economically successful by the 1970s and the privatization of most of them in the 1980s and 1990s. Its first section summarizes briefly an ordinary historical account of each event as developed elsewhere at greater length (in Foster 1992). The second section considers Chicagoan and Virginian explanations of the same events; and whether they are consistent with the other historical explanations. It concludes that Chicagoan theories do not explain any of these episodes plausibly, except possible rail nationalization, but in that case it worked in any sense only over an implausibly long period. Virginian type explanations have greater power in explaining both nationalization and its so-called'failure'thereafter. It is more difficult to explain privatization satisfactorily in Virginian terms.