The Future is Public! The Global Reclaiming and Democratization of Public Ownership Beyond the Market

Abstract

Faced with the convergence of economic, social, political and environmental crises, the importance of the public sector has been rediscovered on a global scale. The article offers a review of the evolution of political and academic debates on public ownership in general and public services provision in particular over the last decades, with emphasis on the energy sector. Taking as a temporal and analytical reference the research and advocacy work developed by the authors and other scholaractivists based at the Transnational Institute from 2006 to the present, the article summarizes the main issues currently in the spotlight and highlights gaps in knowledge and points of contention. It also suggests elements for future research and campaign agendas around public ownership in different regions of the world.

The contested politics of de-privatisation and the shifting terrain of the local state: the case of the Ilm-Kreis, Thuringia, Germany

“…For the past two decades there has been growing interest in processes of de-privatisation and their significance for a pushback against neoliberal governance at the local, municipal, and regional level. On the left, de-privatisation has become a cornerstone of a new pro-public politics aiming to democratise economies and create more socially just, equitable, and environmentally sustainable public services and infrastructure (Chavez and Steinfort 2022 ; Kishimoto 2020 ). As such, de-privatisation is studied for its potential to shift ‘common-sense’ understandings in economic and governance thinking, as an ‘actually existing’ rebuke of neoliberal governance in public service delivery, and to explore alternatives to New Public Management and other market-driven logics (Newman 2000 ).…”