Privatizing Public Enterprises : Constitutions, the State, and Regulation in Comparative Perspective

A comparative examination of the effects of different constitutional and legal traditions on privatization. The authors focus on the UK and France, suggesting that the British Government was remarkably free from limitation, whereas the French were constrained by their written constitution.

This is the first book to use a comparative approach to examine the effects of different constitutional and legal traditions on privatization. Cosmo Graham and Tony Prosser focus on privatization in the UK and France. They suggest that the British Government was remarkably free from constitutional limitation, whereas in France the written constitution imposed important restrictions on the scope of privatization and on the arrangements of the pricing of shares. They go on to describe the links created between privatized enterprises and government by devices such a golden shares and analyse the constraints of competition law and the regulatory arrangements in Britain. They also compare the British regulatory agencies with those in the US, looking in particular at the way in which the influence of Federal and State constitutions has led to the incorporation of significant elements of openness in decision-making procedures.This detailed analysis of the effect of legal constraints on economic policy adds a constitutional dimension to what has primarily been seen as an economic issue, and will make a unique and valuable contribution to current debates in political studies.