Public welfare or financialization: contracts, consultancies, public-private partnerships and public purchases. (Colonization of the government)

Abstract

In the world scenario set up as a result of the retraction of the state and scarcity of resources, national and international economic groups, especially transnational corporations and financial capital, have found (perhaps helped generate or influence to make it possible), new business opportunities (gains) that have been opened thanks to the deregulation of various sectors of government that include public services and the growing inclusion of government purchases in free trade agreements. Since the 1980s, these business sectors (transnational consultancies, risk rating agencies, ISO certifiers) and financial institutions (public debt and public private partnerships) have increasingly positioned themselves in important decision-making spaces, at the same time which have had access to exploit activities that were in charge of governments and public administrations.

These "new forms of financing" and options for the provision of public services present different contradictions that must be analyzed in order to assess the effective benefits they can bring or to reveal their real consequences. This paper reviews the general guideline for government contracting and concession, which includes portfolios of services from transnational consultancies to the national government, expansion of the government procurement market, and forms of public private partnerships.