ABSTRACT
Public sector reform and privatization never take place in isolation from broader efforts at macro-economic and political adjustment. At the heart of the changes under scrutiny is a concern for economic efficiency. At a minimum, states throughout the world are trying to promote greater degrees of market allocation through deregulation and decontrol while evaluating the performance of public assets more on the basis of economic returns than has been the case heretofore. Reform and privatization measures are rarely justified on economic grounds alone; indeed, the reasons that drive the process are always explicitly political but rarely overtly avowed. The grounds on which public sector reform and privatization policy are implemented are always economic, whether they involve something as specific as reducing a state's budget deficit or whether they rely on the belief that the policy will make enterprises more efficient.
