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"Privatization United States."
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Private financing of public transportation infrastructure
This book examines the challenges faced by public officials and stakeholders as they consider implementing public-private partnerships as a way of financing repair and construction of transportation infrastructure. Concepts and practices are described, along with analysis that points to the advantages and disadvantages of decisions to be adopted.
eBook
The Delegated Welfare State
This book explores the delegation of authority over American social programs to private actors. In the development of the American welfare state, policy-makers have often avoided direct governmental provision of benefits and services, turning instead to private actors for the governance of social programs. More recent versions of delegated governance seek also to create social welfare marketplaces in which consumers can choose from an array of private providers. This book examines both the reasons behind this persistent delegation of authority and the consequences. Focusing on the case study of Medicare—and, in particular, the 2003 Medicare Modernization Act—the book argues that fundamental contradictions in American public opinion help explain the prevalence of delegated governance. Americans want both social programs and small government, leaving policy-makers in a bind. To square the circle, policy-makers have contracted out public programs to non-state actors, including voluntary organizations and for-profit entities, as a way to mask the role of the state. Such arrangements also pull in interest group allies—the providers of these programs—who can help pass policies in a political landscape that is fraught with obstacles. Although delegated governance has been politically expedient, it has frequently come at the cost of effective administration and created problems of fraud and abuse. Social welfare marketplaces also suffer from the difficulties individuals have in making choices about the benefits they need. In probing both the causes and consequences of delegated governance, this book offers a novel interpretation of both American social welfare politics and the nature of the American state.
eBook
One Nation Under Contract
International relations scholar Allison Stanger shows how contractors became an integral part of American foreign policy, often in scandalous ways-but also maintains that contractors aren't the problem; the absence of good government is. Outsourcing done right is, in fact, indispensable to America's interests in the information age.
Stanger makes three arguments.
•The outsourcing of U.S. government activities is far greater than most people realize, has been very poorly managed, and has inadvertently militarized American foreign policy;•Despite this mismanagement, public-private partnerships are here to stay, so we had better learn to do them right;•With improved transparency and accountability, these partnerships can significantly extend the reach and effectiveness of U.S. efforts abroad.
The growing use of private contractors predates the Bush Administration, and while his era saw the practice rise to unprecedented levels, Stanger argues that it is both impossible and undesirable to turn back the clock and simply re-absorb all outsourced functions back into government. Through explorations of the evolution of military outsourcing, the privatization of diplomacy, our dysfunctional homeland security apparatus, and the slow death of the U.S. Agency for International Development, Stanger shows that the requisite public-sector expertise to implement foreign policy no longer exists. The successful activities of charities and NGOs, coupled with the growing participation of multinational corporations in development efforts, make a new approach essential. Provocative and far-reaching,One Nation Under Contractpresents a bold vision of what that new approach must be.
eBook
Contested Water
Attempts by local governments to privatize water services have met with furious opposition. Activists argue that to give private companies control of the water supply is to turn water from a common resource into a marketized commodity. Moreover, to cede local power to a global corporation puts communities at the center of controversies over economic globalization. In Contested Water, Joanna Robinson examines local social movement organizing against water privatization, looking closely at battles for control of local water services in Stockton, California, and Vancouver, British Columbia. The movements in these two communities had different trajectories, used different tactics, and experienced different outcomes. Robinson analyzes the factors that shaped these two struggles. Drawing on extensive interviews with movement actors, political leaders, and policymakers and detailed analysis of textual material, Robinson shows that the successful campaign in Vancouver drew on tactics, opportunities, and narratives from the broader antiglobalization movement, with activists emphasizing the threats to local democracy and accountability; the less successful movement in Stockton centered on a ballot initiative that was made meaningless by a pre-emptive city council vote. Robinson finds that global forces are reshaping local movements, particularly those that oppose neoliberal reforms at the municipal level. She argues that anti--water privatization movements that link local and international concerns and build wide-ranging coalitions at local and global levels offer an effective way to counter economic globalization. Successful challenges to globalization will not necessarily come from transnational movements but rather from movements that are connected globally but rooted in local communities.The hardcover edition does not include a dust jacket.
eBook
Science-mart : privatizing American science
This trenchant study analyzes the rise and decline in the quality and format of science in America since World War II.
During the Cold War, the U.S. government amply funded basic research in science and medicine. Starting in the 1980s, however, this support began to decline and for-profit corporations became the largest funders of research. Philip Mirowski argues that a powerful neoliberal ideology promoted a radically different view of knowledge and discovery: the fruits of scientific investigation are not a public good that should be freely available to all, but are commodities that could be monetized.
Consequently, patent and intellectual property laws were greatly strengthened, universities demanded patents on the discoveries of their faculty, information sharing among researchers was impeded, and the line between universities and corporations began to blur. At the same time, corporations shed their in-house research laboratories, contracting with independent firms both in the States and abroad to supply new products. Among such firms were AT&T and IBM, whose outstanding research laboratories during much of the twentieth century produced Nobel Prize–winning work in chemistry and physics, ranging from the transistor to superconductivity.
Science-Mart offers a provocative, learned, and timely critique, of interest to anyone concerned that American science—once the envy of the world—must be more than just another way to make money.
eBook