Suchergebnisse

This text focuses on the politics of privatization in Argentina, Brazil and Peru. It examines both the micro- and macroeconomics of achieving privatization, the policy measures introduced, and factors affecting the implementation of privatization.

AbstractSince 2002, government nationalizations and contractual breaches in general around the world have surged. South America has witnessed a wave of nationalizations of private enterprises, mostly foreign. Some analysts contend that this trend is shaped by the left-wing ideological orientation of the governments, whereas others argue that a more robust explanation is the combination of economic pressure and constraint factors. This article contributes to the debate by using a nuanced institutional analytical framework based on the concept of company versus government opportunism, applied to the recent nationalization of previously privatized companies. It examines Argentina, a country that in the last two decades has seen radical policy reversals, from sweeping privatization of state-owned enterprises in the 1990s to a renationalization effort with some of the same companies in the early 2000s.