ABSTRACT
Privatization represents, in both Britain and France, a definite break with the post-war tradition of state ownership of economic enterprises. The differences in the privatization policies of Britain and France are the result of each country's experience with nationalization, as well as of the specific context in which each found itself in the late 1970s and 1980s. Privatization in Britain has cast a remarkably wide net and has included British Airways, British Gas, British Aerospace, the National Freight Corporation, Rolls-Royce, British Telecom, British Shipbuilders, and British Petroleum. In view of the large role that the public sector came to have in Britain, there had long developed within the Conservative party a voice that called for the sale of public assets in order to reduce the level of the public sector borrowing requirement. As the privatization program has progressed, the order of its priorities appears to have changed.
