Partisan Politics, Globalization, and the Determinants of Privatization Proceeds in Advanced Democracies (1990–2000)

The Determinants of Privatization: a Comparative Analysis of Developing Countries

“…7 There is a small but growing body of quantitative work that focuses on the causal factors driving privatization across countries and across time. This literature offers a number of explanations for state divestiture, the most prominent of which include partisanship (Boix 1997;Doyle 2010), the pressures of liberalization (Schneider, Fink and Tenbu¨cken 2005), diffusion (Meseguer 2004), domestic economic conditions (Brune and Garrett 2000;Zohlnho¨fer, Obinger and Wolf 2008) and the design of legal institutions (Bortolotti, Fantini and Siniscalco 2003).…”

“…Once a national government has decided to privatize, electoral incentives will prompt governments to act strategically, and therefore the core clientele of the governing party will shape the decision of how much to sell. Left-leaning governments will be associated with lower volumes of privatization, given the negative dislocating effect that privatization will have on their core support (Boix 1997;Zohlnho¨fer, Obinger and Wolf 2008;Doyle 2010Doyle , 2012Bjørnskov and Potrafke 2011), while right-leaning parties will be associated with higher volumes of privatization (Boix 1997;Bortolotti, Fantini and Siniscalco 2003).…”

“…In particular, the potential efficiency gain from privatization has received considerable attention from economists (see for example, Dewenter and Malatesta 2001). There are now a growing number of empirical studies that explore the determinants of privatization across countries and across time (see Boix 1997;Brune and Garrett 2000;Biglaiser and Danis 2002;Bortolotti, Fantini and Siniscalco 2003;Brune, Garrett and Kogut 2004;Meseguer 2004;Henisz, Zellner and Guille´n 2005;Schneider, Fink and Tenbu¨cken 2005;Murillo and Martı´nez-Gallardo 2007;Zohlnho¨fer, Obinger and Wolf 2008;Doyle 2010;Bjørnskov and Potrafke 2011). The majority of these studies, however, focus exclusively on the advanced industrialized nations and many of them have been hampered by methodological limitations coupled with the lack of reliable, comparable and temporal data on privatization.…”

Explaining policy change in the EU: financial reform after the crisis

“…Questions of efficiency, competition and regulation were pushed into the background. The narrowing down of privatisation to its fiscal core was reminiscent of the 1990s, when some countries had used privatisation proceeds to qualify for Maastricht and EMU (Wagschal and Wenzelburger, 2008;Savage, 2001;Zohlnhöfer et al, 2008). This policy image as a narrow tool for financial reform of ailing Member States facilitated its inclusion as part of the broad conditionality programmes of structural reform.…”

Making a Market out of a Welfare State: Swedish Local Politicians’ Perspectives on Elderly Care Marketisation

“…This new politics of welfare has been accepted by many researchers (Busemeyer 2009;Castles 2007;Huber and Stephens 2001;Kittel and Obinger 2003;Zohlnhöfer et al 2008). For instance, Schneider, Fink, and Tenbücken (2005) studied the changes in the shares held by the government of the dominant provider in three infrastructure sectors (telecommunications, electricity, and aviation sectors) between 1970 and 2000, and they found that partisan differences seen in the 1980s disappeared in the 1990s.…”