The Social and Political Consequences of Decentralization and Privatization PDF Download

Author: Harvard University. John F. Kennedy School of Government. Project Liberty
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Europe, Eastern
Languages : en
Pages : 117

View

Book Description

Author: Shirley Williams
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Privatization
Languages : en
Pages : 117

View

Book Description

Author: Joseph Zajda
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1402033583
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 245

View

Book Description
Decentralisation and Privatisation in Education explores the ambivalent and problematic relationship between the State, privatisation, and decentralisation in education globally. Using a number of diverse paradigms, ranging from critical theory to globalisation, the authors, by focusing on privatisation, marketisation and decentralisation, will attempt to examine critically both the reasons and outcomes of education reforms, policy change and transformation and provide a more informed critique on the Western-driven models of accountability, quality and school effectiveness. We want to demonstrate that claims of advantages in ‘efficiency’ brought about by privatisation in education are not always supported empirically as proposed by proponents. The book examines the overall interplay between privatisation, decentralisation and the role of the state. The authors draw upon recent studies in the areas of decentralisation, privatisation and the role of the state in education. By referring to Bourdieu’s call for critical policy analysts to engage in a ‘critical sociology’ of their own contexts of practice, and poststructuralist and postmodernist pedagogy, this collection of book chapters demonstrate how central discourses surrounding the debate of privatisation, decentralisation and the role of the state are formed in the contexts of dominant ideology, power, and culturally and historically derived perceptions and practices. The authors discuss the newly constructed and re-invented imperatives of privatisation, decentralisation and marketisation and show how they may well be operating as an educational model of a new global ‘master narrative’— playing a hegemonic role within the framework of economic, political and cultural hybrids of globalization.

Author: James Manor
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 152

View

Book Description
Nearly all countries worldwide are now experimenting with decentralization. Their motivation are diverse. Many countries are decentralizing because they believe this can help stimulate economic growth or reduce rural poverty, goals central government interventions have failed to achieve. Some countries see it as a way to strengthen civil society and deepen democracy. Some perceive it as a way to off-load expensive responsibilities onto lower level governments. Thus, decentralization is seen as a solution to many different kinds of problems. This report examines the origins and implications decentralization from a political economy perspective, with a focus on its promise and limitations. It explores why countries have often chosen not to decentralize, even when evidence suggests that doing so would be in the interests of the government. It seeks to explain why since the early 1980s many countries have undertaken some form of decentralization. This report also evaluates the evidence to understand where decentralization has considerable promise and where it does not. It identifies conditions needed for decentralization to succeed. It identifies the ways in which decentralization can promote rural development. And it names the goals which decentralization will probably not help achieve.

Author: Remy Prud'homme
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN:
Category : Central-local government relations
Languages : en
Pages : 43

View

Book Description
Demand for decentralization is strong in most parts of the world. This close look at the negative side effects of improperly appled decentralization is not an attack on decentralization but an effort to prevent its misapplication -- and to promote fuller understanding and wiser use of this potentially desirable policy.

Author: Amanda Lu
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

View

Book Description
This dissertation examines sociopolitical phenomenon in the New Orleans all-charter school system to make broader claims about how decentralization (the dispersal of state power into smaller entities) and privatization (the involvement of private actors in providing public services) alter the state that structures the society in which we live. Every "public school" in New Orleans is a charter school. Charter schools receive a mix of public and private funding, are privately managed and governed, and have operational autonomy. As an extreme of decentralization and privatization, New Orleans' school system allows us to assess the social and political consequences of pursuing these types of reforms in how we provide public services to citizens in a democratic society. While other research may interrogate charter schools in the contexts of markets, opportunities for innovations, or equity-oriented policy interventions, I instead focus on the ways that charter schools reconfigure the American state apparatus vis-à-vis the destabilization of long-standing public institutions, the involvement of private contractors, decentralized governance, and the introduction of market-based logics. The New Orleans system was built on actions from the state that disproportionately harmed Black people and institutions, destabilized Black communities, and limited Black political power. Previous research on the New Orleans system and market-based school reforms allows me to conceptualize the school system as an event of mass disenfranchisement: Dispossession: Historically Black schools were disproportionately closed in the state takeover process dispossessing Black people of important social, cultural, and political institutions. (Buras, 2011; Buras, 2015; Ewing, 2018; Dixson et al, 2015; Duncan-Shippey, 2019) Exclusion: Black people were systematically excluded from the founding and management of new charter schools opening in the post-Katrina system. (Dixson & Henry, 2016; Henry, 2019; Henry, 2021, Lay & Bauman, 2019; Lay, 2022) Replacement: Black teachers were fired en masse and replaced by a less experienced Whiter teacher labor force. Choice policies and school closures have potentially facilitated the gentrification of Black neighborhoods. (Lincove et al, 2017; Pearman & Swain, 2017; Pearman & Greene, 2022; Tompkins, 2015) Restructuring: Black political power has been diminished as the powers of the elected school board have been delegated to charter school boards with non-elected board members that are not demographically representative of New Orleans. (Kipman, 2011; DeBray et al, 2014; Harris, 2020; Bulkley et al, 2021; Scott; 2015) As one of my informants, Pastor Brenda Square described to me: I think in New Orleans, we're back in 1900, when the early activists had to fight to get schools. Everything we've built has been taken from us and now here we are in 2022. Just as the Supreme Court decision is taking away the rights of women, we have experienced our rights being taken away in terms of public education and government. My research question in this dissertation is a result of thinking through the existing literature, Pastor Square's reflections, and an acknowledgement of people's agency to resist. I ask the broader question: What democratic possibilities exist in highly decentralized and privatized state arrangements? In my first paper, I examine political mobilization around school renamings in New Orleans. I make a theoretical contribution to field theory by examining what motivates certain actors to mobilize around school names. Strategic action fields (Fligstein & McAdam, 2012) model arenas of sociopolitical action. They are dynamic in nature but can also shift. I conceptualize the transition to an all-charter school system as a field shift. Currently, field theory lacks concepts linking successive fields and knowledge about how permanent structures of inequality, such as race, gender, and class, persist through fields. I contribute the idea of a field remnant to help link successive fields and provide a mechanism in which racial inequality between fields in maintained. In my second paper, I interrogate the extremes of institutional power that charter autonomy can afford certain organizations through the case of Lusher Charter School. After becoming a charter school in 2006, Lusher has developed exclusive admission and financial practices that have allowed it to provide a highly-resourced educational experience for a White and wealthy subset of the New Orleans public school population. The school's leadership and governing board also suppress uses of voice by the Lusher community when these practices or the authority of school leaders are questioned. I find that charter autonomy allows Exit, Loyalty, and Voice (Hirschman, 1970) to be manipulated within the institution. My findings on charter autonomy contribute to an ongoing and prescient policy conversation about the status of charter schools as publicly accountable institution. In my final paper, I take a systems-level view of democratic participation in the many spaces of education governance that exist in New Orleans' decentralized school system. Decentralization has been conceived as a potential avenue for localizing decision-making and reinvigorating democratic spaces that a growing public bureaucracy has complicated. However, decentralization is often pursued in tandem with privatization. I use the concept of Deweyan publics as a way to identify groups with similar policy interests. I find that generally publics are absent in decision making around issues of public education in New Orleans, especially in charter board meetings. Though I observe publics can still be consequential, they have new constraints and challenges. Additionally, the reform community in New Orleans can act as a powerful public committed to preserving aspects of the all-charter system that limit the potential for democratic voice. I urge for a conceptualization of localism that accounts for the democratic consequences of privatization. Through this dissertation, I contribute work that urges us to consider the democratic consequences of reforms that reconstruct the American state without preserving democratic institutions. The progress of past generations is at stake, and we can no longer think through narrow policy lenses that do not prioritize our society's democratic values and commitments. It will always be generational work to strive for a better world, but we can ensure that our future generations are given educational systems to improve and not to rebuild.

Author: Saltman, Richard
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education (UK)
ISBN: 033521925X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 327

View

Book Description
Exploring the capacity and impact of decentralization within European health care systems, this book examines both the theoretical underpinnings as well as practical experience with decentralization.

Author: Antoni Verger
Publisher: Teachers College Press
ISBN: 0807774723
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 244

View

Book Description
Education privatization is a global phenomenon that has crystallized in countries with very different cultural, political, and economic backgrounds. In this book, the authors examine how privatization policies are being adopted and why so many countries are engaging in this type of education reform. The authors explore the contexts, key personnel, and policy initiatives that explain the worldwide advance of the private sector in education, and identify six different paths toward education privatization—as a drastic state sector reform (e.g., Chile, the U.K.), as an incremental reform (e.g., the U.S.A.), in social-democratic welfare states, as historical public-private partnerships (e.g., Netherlands, Spain), as de facto privatization in low-income countries, and privatization via disaster. Book Features: The first comprehensive, in-depth investigation of the political economy of education privatization at a global scale.An analysis of the different strategies, discourses, and agents that have contributed to advancing (and resisting) education privatization trends. An examination of the role of private corporations, policy entrepreneurs, philanthropic organizations, think-tanks, and teacher unions. “Rich in examples, careful in its analysis, important in its conclusions and recommendations for further work, this book is a vital, rigorous, up-to-date resource for education policy researchers.” —Stephen J. Ball, University College London “Few issues are as significant as is education privatization across the globe; few treatments of this issue offer both the breadth and nuanced understanding that this book does.” —Christopher Lubienski, Indiana University

Author: Edward B. Fiske
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 9780821337233
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 52

View

Book Description
This book identifies and examines the political dimensions of decentralization. Decentralization programs vary from country to country, but there are common threads and fundamental questions in all situations. The book covers the following themes and topics: (1) a case study of school decentralization in Colombia over a period of more than two decades; (2) why decentralization is political; (3) why countries decentralize; (4) what decentralization accomplishes; (5) the importance of developing consensus; and (6) how to begin building consensus. (Contains 32 references.) (EH)

Author: V. V. Ramanadham
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134903871
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 617

View

Book Description
Documents the recent developments in privatisation through 25 country case-studies. The studies outline the varying privatisation programmes, comparing them with material from developed, developing and former communist countries.