Privatisation

Abstract

The previous chapter discussed the growth of government, over the past three decades, in the countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). One feature of the 1980s, common to several countries of the industrialised world, was an attempt to curb the growth of government by ‘rolling back’ the frontiers of the state, a feature that was sufficiently widespread and strong to be termed the ‘Conservative Revolution’.¹ One aspect of this attempt by government to divest itself of some of its involvement in the economy was the transfer to the private sector of many of the economic activities that had earlier been carried out by the public sector, a process that was labelled privatisation. In 1992, across the world, $69 billion worth of state-owned firms passed into private hands and, if planned privatisations materialise, this figure could double by the year 2000.² Indeed, a policy that, in 1983, appeared heretical to all but the most radical believer in free markets, is today a part of conventional economic wisdom.