ABSTRACT
Public services are not what they used to be. Over the past three decades, state assets, including utilities, have been sold either in part or in full to the private sector. Monopolies have been unbundled and exposed to competition or required to operate on a fully commercial basis. Services once provided by governments are now delivered through the private sector as a result of outsourcing, competitive contracting, public-private partnerships (PPPs) and private fi nance initiatives (PFIs). Public and private sector services that were previously subsidized have been subjected to user charges or full cost recovery from citizen-consumers. Liberalization of foreign investment, the transnationalization of services corporations and the emergence of international supply chains have removed many services not just from the public domain, but also from the effective control of national governments. The neoliberal menu of corporatization, privatization, deregulation and globalization continues to expand, despite evidence from all over the world that services markets often fail,1 sometimes with tragic human consequences.2 The term ‘public services’ is no longer fashionable in most policy circles, and even
‘governmental services’ sits uncomfortably with a preference for an enabling state that operates through markets and light-touch regulation. Despite its comprehensive nature, however, the transition from a social to a market conceptualization of services has been neither seamless nor uncontested. The ideology, funding, regulation and delivery of ‘public services’ may have changed dramatically over the past three decades, but many – probably most – people’s prevailing perceptions, values and needs are still tied to a highly social concept of services. This chapter focuses on moves to embed the neoliberal paradigm through binding and enforceable international ‘trade in services’ treaties at the multilateral level by the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), complemented by a new generation of free trade agreements (FTAs). Those agreements have generated vigorous resistance across local, national, regional and international domains from communities who oppose the subordination of public services to ‘trade’ rules, either in a generic sense or in specifi c sectors like healthcare, education and water.3 The war of words over public services has become the principal battleground between advocates and opponents of the GATS. The World Trade Organization (WTO) felt suffi ciently threatened to publish its own booklet in 2003, entitled GATS – Fact and Fiction, which vehemently refuted claims that:
the right to maintain public services and the power to enforce health and safety standards are under threat, though both are explicitly safeguarded under the GATS. How have serious people come to believe what is, on the face of it, out of the question? Why should any Government, let alone over 140 Governments, agree to allow themselves to be forced, or force each other, to surrender or compromise powers which are important to them, and to all of us?4
