ABSTRACT
The issue of privatisation raises some of the most important criticisms of regulation theory which relate to its conceptualisation of change. Advocates of regulation theory claim that it avoids, on the one hand, structuralism, in which structures somehow maintain and transform themselves free of human agency and, on the other hand, voluntarism in which humans can achieve anything. However, their apparent solution to these twin sins raises a number of methodological difficulties. In theory, regulationists recognise a diversity of struggles by a plurality of interests in capitalist society. However, Hirst and Zeitlin (1991) argue that in practice the approach usually resorts to an uncritical, class-based explanation. For example, the declining rate of productivity under Fordism is attributed to trade union movements which are seen as embodiments of the broad class struggle. This approach tends to ignore other social divisions based around gender, race or religion. However, more often, when descriptions are made of the transition from Fordism to neo-Fordism, greater weight is given to technological and organisational developments in the production process without appreciation of the ways in which these changes are contested by different social groups. This gives the impression that there is something inevitable about the transition. Thus, Clarke (1988) notes that Aglietta’s original exposition gave an important role to the class struggle but, in practice, the regulationists have tended to adopt a structuralist-functionalist model in which there is a phase of structural integration followed by structural disintegration. As Elam notes, ‘the history of capitalism remains one where “new” techno-economic forces always do the initial acting and “old” socio-institutional frameworks the eventual reacting’ (Elam, 1990, p. 12). This ‘implied determinism’ (Cochrane, 1991) is apparent in the regulationists’ view of privatisation. The approach tends to suggest that privatisation is necessary because of the logic of capitalism, yet in reality privatisation is a highly contested political process. It is therefore impossible to see privatisation in purely economic terms.
