La privatización de los servicios públicos. La experiencia de las ciudades estadounidenses

The purpose of this work is to summarize the U.S. case in the context of public-private cooperation in the eighties. The work aims at summarizing the costs and benefits of privatization and identifying some characteristics of successful projects. Privatization is defined as any change in the provision, regulation and subvention of the traditionally called “public” services (LeGrand and Robinson, 1984). The first part presents some of the topics most frequently associated with privatization in advanced capitalist countries. The following section summarizes some fundamental milestones of public-private cooperation in the United States. Then, a panorama of the context of restructuring in urban development is presented. The main section gathers some examples of the privatization and decentralization of public services; understanding decentralization as an integral process that intends to transfer both decision making and funding onto a small public administrative body that exists at any given time. Indeed, we have to understand privatization and decentralization as varied processes, with an especial formula that manifests under quite singular sociopolitical and economic circumstances, with some principal features. We start with the historical background of public-private cooperation in the United States.