The Make or Buy State: Towards a Political Economy of Government Contracting

• In Event: 3134 - Economic Sociology Regular Session: Finance, Markets, and the State

Abstract

Collaboration with private organizations has been a durable element in American government, intensified by the contracting out and market models promoted by neoliberalism. These arrangements do not produce simply less government. They also result in situations where private firms and organizations come to control many of the points of contact between citizens and the state: wars are conducted by joint forces of troops and contractors, the annual ritual of tax-filing is reconstituted as a profit point by private firms, philanthropists and developers collaborate with municipal agencies in defining trajectories of public investment in urban communities. These arrangements also produce new patterns of volatility and acquiescence in democratic politics, shifting both the extent of individual rights and forms of democratic accountability. Finally, the location of the boundary between state-organized provision and state-funded private provision has powerful implications for the development of firms and industries. An initial review in light of transactions cost theory, democratic norms of equal treatment, and the power of anti-statist politics generate a set of novel research questions.

Authors

• Elisabeth S. Clemens, University of Chicago

• Yuhao Zhuang, University of Chicago