ABSTRACT
The telecommunications trade press has been full of news about state PITs "going private." Much literature on the privatization of telecommunications has been descriptive and prescriptive (e.g., Ambrose, Hennemeyer, & Chapon, 1990; Roth, 1987; Wellenius, Stern, Nulty, & Stern, 1989). We are now at a stage where we can step back and use theory and history to conceptualize why and how different nation-states are rebalancing public and private investment (Mody, Tsui, & McCormick, 1993). Part II of this book focuses on the political forces in present-day developing country contexts that have influenced the increasing private sector participation in their telecom sectors. This context-analytical approach is essential to avoid looking at the increase in private capital investment as a disembodied "rational" natural transnational process that comes from nowhere. Previous chapters have examined global capitalism, locational decisions of U.S. foreign telecom operator-investors, the role of the World Bank in orchestrating the global financial integration process, and the different roles of domestic capital in Latin America and East Asia. This chapter focuses on the state. In-depth analysis of individual forces in each chapter is conducted against the background of cyclical global restructuring and state-market pendulum swings that are an integral part of the historical capital accumulation process.
