Privatization and the Market Frame

Privatization debates are typically organized around neoliberal baseline assumptions treating markets as more efficient than government and assuming privatization decisions are apolitical and technocratic. Titolo critically examines these assumptions, arguing that abandoning the neoliberal frame reveals privatization policies function fraught with normative implications. The article traces how neoliberalism constitutes an intellectual framework and institutionalized political-economic practice premised on market self-regulation and efficient markets. The financial crisis illustrates inadequacy of many baseline assumptions about market efficiency and government incompetence. Titolo contends that certain a priori assumptions about privatization make it difficult to see how such policies actually function in the world. By subjecting default market efficiency assumptions to empirical and conceptual scrutiny, and moving past neoclassical models, legal theory can develop new approaches to understanding privatization. The article suggests new baselines for privatization discussions that account for privatization's normative dimensions rather than treating it as neutral, efficient, and apolitical.

Topics: Corporate Law · Administrative Law

Keywords: privatization · neoliberalism · market efficiency · government regulation · Washington Consensus · political economy