Exposed to Innumerable Delusions: Public Enterprise and State Power in Egypt, India, Mexico, and Turkey (Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions) - Hardcover

Waterbury, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521434971 ISBN 13: 9780521434973

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1993

Synopsis

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 industrialization. This 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.

About this title

Book Description

Examination of the origins and dynamics of state sectors reveals the efforts to reform or liquidate them by developing countries, who having established extensive public enterprise sectors, seek to regulate most economic activities outside the state sector.

Review

"This book is one of the most important books written on the political economy of economic reform in developing, non-Communist countries that I have read." The Annals of the American Academy

"This book is a model of how to do context-sensitive yet truly comparative politics...such a good book that I find it impossible not to ask its author to delve deeper and wider. I learned so much from what he did write that I am eager to learn from what more he could write." Margaret Levi, American Political Science Review

"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

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521434971
• ISBN 13: 9780521434973
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 368