Exposed to Innumerable Delusions
Public Enterprise and State Power in Egypt, India, Mexico, and Turkey

A comparative 1993 analysis of the growth of public enterprise sectors in Egypt, India, Mexico and Turkey.

John Waterbury (Author)

9780521435499, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 24 September 1993

368 pages, 1 b/w illus. 52 tables
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.2 cm, 0.597 kg

"John Waterbury has written another classic. He fully lives up to his reputation for presenting rich, prodigiously researched descriptions of political economies, theoretically informed by mainstream American political science....Country experts will find this book a treasure trove of information about macroeconomics; government structures; the mazes of public-sector and other business regulations; the size, history, structures, and management of state enterprises; business groups; and labor unions." International Journal of Middle East Studies

The states of Egypt, India, Mexico and Turkey have all developed extensive public enterprise sectors and have sought to regulate most economic activities outside the state sector. Their experiences have been typical of scores of developing countries that followed similar paths of industrialisation. This 1993 study examines the origins of these state sectors, the dynamics of their growth and crises, and the efforts to reform or liquidate them. It is argued that public ownership creates its own culture and pathology that are similar across otherwise different systems. The logic of principal-agent relations under public ownership is so powerful that it swamps culture and peculiar institutional histories. While public sectors accumulate powerful associated interests over time, against most predictions these prove relatively powerless to block the reform process.

Preface
1. Introduction: property and change
2. The will to transform
3. Strategies and policies of industrialization
4. Bald comparisons
5. Principals and agents: the characteristics of public enterprise performance
6. Reform and divestiture
7. Managerial careers and interests
8. The coalitional basis of state sectors
9. The public-private symbiosis
10. Public enterprise and organised labor
11. Conclusion
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Political economy [KCP]