Teaching Comparative Government and Politics

Wednesday, February 02, 2011

Free market government services

Margaret Thatcher promoted the privatization of public services, but public resistance was powerful. Perhaps Cameron and Clegg will be more successful.

Where Thatcher feared to tread

Across much of the public sector—from health and education to local authorities and prisoner rehabilitation—the provision of public services is increasingly being farmed out to private suppliers. The political risks are equally stark…

Mr Cameron and Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat deputy prime minister, are accelerating and deepening Tony Blair’s drive to increase choice and competition in the public services…

If sensitivity to market-based reform is particularly acute when it comes to the health service, in some other areas it has gradually become a fact of life. Local councils of all political colours now contract-out important services…

But there is potential for strife in areas besides the NHS. In education, the government wants to go farther than Mr Blair in challenging the dominance of comprehensive schools…

[A]dverse side-effects might well dominate the political debate before the benefits are felt, let alone appreciated by the public. The first symptoms of change will not be positive: the health reform and others will contribute to the imminent wave of redundancies in the public sector…

Market reforms involve stronger institutions taking over weaker ones. Yet even when some state schools are performing poorly, local parents often campaign against them being taken over, because they prize convenience and continuity over performance…

The history of reform since the 1980s shows that the public and professionals are often more flexible than instant cries of outrage suggest. The early rows over “contracting out” in the 1980s have subsided: the benefits of competition in areas from telecoms to utilities are now widely accepted...

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Labels: capacity, change, politics, UK