Rethinking Municipal Privatization

This book examines one of the most high-profile municipal privatizations-the privatization of New York City's Central Park. The fiscal crisis of the 1970s established the political and cultural opening for privatizations, which were justified on the basis of increasing efficiency. However, as Cooke demonstrates, these justifications were deliberately blind to the social and economic implication of privatization. This fascinating account moves beyond the hackneyed pro- versus anti-privatization debate by reconceptualizing the park's privatization as an ensemble of contradictory class effects. It also highlights the immense theoretical and policy space for radically reconsidering and rethinking privatization processes in both the municipal and global contexts.

List of contents

1. Municipal Privatization: An Introduction1.1 Institutional Forms and Conceptions of Privatization1.2 New York City’s Privatization Experience During the 1990s2. The Evolution of the Municipal Privatization Discourse2.1 The Development of a Theory of Privatization2.2 A Theory Comes of Age: The 1970s Watershed and Urban Fiscal Crisis2.3 The Reagan Years2.4 The 1990s: Reinventing Government2.5 The Heterodox Terrain of the Privatization Discourse: the 1970s and Early 1980s2.6 Retrenchment and the Heterodox Discourse of the 1980s2.7 The Mid- to Late 1980s: Entrepreneurial Government2.8 The 1990s: Neoliberalism and Globalization2.9 Critiquing the Discourse: Assessing Methodology and Content3. A Class Approach to Municipal Privatization3.1 The Class Process, Classes, and the Subsumed Class Process3.2 Overdetermination3.3 The Implications of a Class Approach to Municipal Privatization.Appendix: Post-Privatization Wage Outcomes4. A Class Analysis of Central Park’s Privatization4.1 The Historical Backdrop to Central Park’s Privatization4.2 A Class Analytic Interpretation of Central Park’s Privatization4.3 Conceptualizing the Central Park Commodity4.4 The Central Park Commodity’s Production4.5 A Class Analytic Model of the Central Park Conservancy.Appendix: Estimating the Central Park Commodity’s Cost Price5. The Class Analytic Implications of Central Park’s Privatization5.1 Beyond Efficiency and Cost5.2 The Central Park Conservancy’s Fundraising and the Capitalist Sector5.3 The Central Park Conservancy’s Fundraising and the Non-profit Sector5.4 Central Park’s Privatization and Independent and Communist Producers5.5 Municipal Privatizations as Ensembles6. Rethinking Municipal Privatization6.1 Non-Progressive Municipal Privatizations6.2 Non-Capitalist Enterprises and their Viability in the Context of Municipal Privatization6.3 Progressive Municipal Privatizations: Democratic Enterprise Formation6.4 The Policy Merits of Progressive Municipal Privatizations6.5 Rethinking Municipal Privatization on the Left7. Rethinking the Privatization of State-Owned Enterprises7.1 The Global Privatization Movement7.2 The Motives for Privatizations7.3 Methods of Divestiture7.4 What Privatizations of State-Owned Enterprises have done and not done: a Class Analytic Interpretation7.5 Theorizing Progressive Privatizations Involving State-Owned Enterprises7.6 The Policy Implications of Progressive Privatizations

About the author

Oliver D. Cooke

Summary

This book examines one of the most high-profile municipal privatizations—the privatization of New York City’s Central Park. The fiscal crisis of the 1970s established the political and cultural opening for privatizations, which were justified on the basis of increasing efficiency. However, as Cooke demonstrates, these justifications were deliberately blind to the social and economic implication of privatization. This fascinating account moves beyond the hackneyed pro- versus anti-privatization debate by reconceptualizing the park’s privatization as an ensemble of contradictory class effects. It also highlights the immense theoretical and policy space for radically reconsidering and rethinking privatization processes in both the municipal and global contexts.

Product details

• Authors: Oliver D Cooke, Oliver D. Cooke, COOKE OLIVER D
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 14.12.2012
• EAN: 9780415543118
• ISBN: 978-0-415-54311-8
• No. of pages: 210
• Series: New Political Economy; New Political Economy
• Subject: Social sciences, law, business > Business > General, dictionaries