Essay #3- Danielle Tibbetts- Privatization and the Failing Empire Logic

            Within Sub-Sahara Africa and one of the main areas of concern for the United Nations? MDGs plan, a dilemma has arisen.  Since the mid 80?s until now various African country officials, backed and persuaded by United Nation-based multinational groups, such a as the World Bank, have pushed the idea of privatization and deregulation as the most effective ?road? to reaching one of the main goals of the MDGs, ensuring environmental sustainability such as having safe drinking water and electricity. From the outside looking in, major capitalist societies would see this as a sure way of instilling strong competition, which would foster the best development of infrastructure and sustainability, yet for these various African countries this has yet to happen, and in fact the deregulation and privatization of utilities has actually done the exact opposite of what was predicted, it has caused those countries to worsen in these areas.

            The main reason behind the failure of privatization in these developing countries is that investors are not willing to invest in these areas where they see no profitable return (Bayliss, Mckinley, 2007, p. 26). Yet, U.N. supported groups such as the World Bank consistently defend the idea of privatization as the best way, and only push harder for stronger, more stable plans of privatization. ?Privatization and Alternative Public Sector Reform in sub-Saharan Africa confirm?despite years of trying to privatize utilities, public utilities remain?the dominant providers of water and electricity? (Bayliss, Mckinley, 2007, p.28). Even with this constant reminder that public control has consistently proven more effective, donors such as U.N. multinational groups, who provide the finances behind the plans, increased support of private investors from ?US $45 million to US $687 million, while decreasing their support of public infrastructure investment by 50%, within the time-span of 1990 to 2001 (Bayliss, Mckinley, 2007, p.26).  As Featherstone explained it, ?the Western Enlightenment world-view-images of democracy, freedom?? (1990, p.7) seem to be the ?fairyland? that many of the U.N. officials imagine when they constantly push a program that repeatedly shows no improvement in such a must-have necessity, and because of the drastic switch in capital, African countries virtually lost all support from both U.N. led donors and investors who are receiving the support to invest but have no interest in it.

                        Ironically many of the developed countries pushing for privatization and support of it in developing countries, have the opposite strategy for their own countries, in which their basic utilities are regulated through government agencies (Zaza, 2002, p.1). Of course African countries have had an unstable foundation. Since many of them became independent states their governments have been in the hands of militant power hungry leaders who ruled with corruption, but just as government can be corrupt, private contractors can also be; and this has been the case in many areas of Sub-Sahara Africa. Zaza points this out when he states, ?In particular, it?s common for private contractors to bid low to get the business, then push their prices up once the government force has been disbanded.? (2002, p.2), which creates an impossible barrier for the poorest and most in need of these basic utilities.

            In this simple example we see the ideological issues of empire and cultural imperialism at work, to what scale of each only research can point out. Obviously western views on capitalism and newly acclaimed privatization of all once government regulated areas is the new bandwagon that many believe will save the day, yet this western capitalistic view can not fit into all areas of the world as seen here. The U.N.?s steadfastness of a plan that does not seem to work shows us how the empire logic is at work, and as  Hardt and Negri stated, ? the capitalist project to bring together economic power and political power, to realize, in other words, a properly capitalist order? (2000, p.17), which seems to be one of pillars that the U.N. is holding on to.

References:

Bayliss, Kate; McKinley,Terry. Providing basic utilities in sub Saharan Africa: why has privatization failed? Environment, Vol. 49, 3, 2007, p.1-8.

Featherstone, M. (1990). Global culture: an introduction. In M. Featherstone (Ed.), Global culture: Nationalism, globalization, and modernity. London; Newbury Park: Sage.

Hardt, Micheal, and Negri, Antonio (2000). ?Preface? (pp.xi-xvii) and Part 1 (pp. 1-66), Empire. Cambridge, Ma, and London, England: Harvard University Press.

ZaZa, J. Yanqui. Privatization and deregulation, or no aid: poor countries dilemma. The Perspective, GA, 2002. http://www.theperspective.org/deregulation.html

Posted at 12:15AM Jun 08, 2007 by TIBBETTS, DANIELLE in General  |  Comments[2]