Short Description of the Book

"In this book we attempt a study of the privatization process through the eyes of comparative constitutional lawyers. At first sight this might seem surprising, especially for British readers; do constitutions really have anything to say about a process quintessentially located in political economy, and apparently determined by the logic of markets, not of legal intervention?. Moreover, decisions on privatization by the British courts have been virtually unknown. In fact, one of our themes will be that the lack of constitutional concern with privatization is a British peculiarity; thus in the French privatization program, constitutional constraints has a major role to play in determining how it was implemented. Similarly, in the United States the role of regulation, and, in particular, the procedure of regulatory bodies, has been determined to a large extent by framework of overarching constitutional concerns.

We hope that we shall be able to contribute in this work to a growing debate with political studies about the role of the state. As we shall outline in Chapter 1, this has largely concerned the autonomy of the state from civil society. Whilst we will suggest that the privatization process has a political as well as economic logic, and so does illustrate one aspect of such autonomy, our major concern will be with the related but distinct question of autonomy within the state; in particular the constraints imposed by different systems of public law on the ability of governments to implement policy. Again, the idea of the state as a concept much broader than that of government may seem strange to British eyes, but in continental Europe it is a common place of political and legal debate. We also hope to offer to public lawyers a description of the workings of written constitutions in relatively unfamiliar areas of political economy..." (taken from the preface")

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: The Constitutional and Institutional Background

Chapter 3: The Large Sales of Shares

Chapter 4: Private Sales

Chapter 5: After Privatization: Links with Government

Chapter 6: Regulatory Structures and Competition Law

Chapter 7: Regulatory Procedures

Chapter 8: Conclusion