Gouvernance et Privatisation

Citation

Magne, L. (2011), "Gouvernance et Privatisation", Society and Business Review, Vol. 6 No. 1, pp. 100-103. https://doi.org/10.1108/17465681111105878

Privatization is now perceived as rather “natural” and it is often taken for granted that “it is a good thing”! But do we know what privatization really is and what kind of political regime and institutions it will inevitably bring in? This fascinating book has been motivated by the lack of reflection on the concept of “privatization”, a concept that may appear at first, however, very familiar. Yvon Pesqueux intends to resume investigation from scratch and to give this concept its full momentum and understanding so as to trace the genesis of governance and its pervasiveness in contemporary western societies.

Privatization means much more than just “selling a business or an industry so that it is no longer owned by the government”: it is a long run social process, which is now about to be fully institutionalized, consequences included! Privatization is this social process of change for a society where almost everything in social and political life has become a private or even a financial matter, as opposed to a public and democratic concern. It is thus a major transformation of political life; and of the body politic itself, which has simply changed nature. Private interests are now shaping the very definition of the common good in society and this outcome of the “liberal turn” can be questioned through the rise and institutionalization of corporate or even global governance, perfectly epitomizing the process of privatization, leading to a new and odd political regime: “deliberative democracy”.

Pesqueux (2007) begins his first chapter by gathering evidence of a change or shift in the way political issues are addressed in a French or European context. The author identifies a “liberal turn” which will gradually introduce a compulsory reference to the market in order to make political decisions. The latter is considered to be just, fair and able to give accurate evaluation for any problem involving values. In this process, an economic liberalism has replaced a political liberalism, which brings into the foreground the concept of regulation and “soft law” instead of that of legal rules and “hard law”. The examination of the many principles advocated in corporate governance (accountability, inclusiveness, independence, precaution, prudence, subsidiarity, traceability, transparency) shows how these are used instead of a reference to values in order to promote private norms in the form of a seemingly “applied ethics” with which compliance must be enforced. This raises the questions of conformism and transgression, especially since, because of contingency, everything has its own particularities and thus may be entitled to ask for specific derogations: “comply or explain”! Governance mechanisms and the implicit reference to civil society have just unnoticeably changed political life and its institutional nature.

Pesqueux (2007) then consider the concept of institution since, in his argumentation, it is precisely what is under attack during the “liberal turn”. Management (and its organizational dimension) has become a key reference in the functioning of today's western societies (thus contaminating their institutional being). The author offers us a personal reading of neo‐institutionalism in economics, sociology, as well as their use in organization science by constructing a dichotomy between “institution” and “organization”. Institution is presented here as fundamentally political, which we can summarize as omniscient on public questions (hence taken for granted and legitimate to carry out collective value judgments and define the common good), of symbolic value, mission oriented (e.g. hospitals) and acting with determination and continuity, whereas organization is seen as fundamentally economic, based on the omniscience of private experts (making almost only private and financial judgments and thus legitimate to carry out individual value judgments and not able to define the common good), of materialistic essence, efficiency oriented and thus acting with opportunism and flexibility, within a national or international company laws framework. Companies have tried and succeeded to escape such a hard institutional framework by enacting the legitimacy of regulation and “soft law”, for the sake of efficiency, instead of rules and “hard law”. This devolution of political power has made them able to foster efficiency and the market categories of the organization to the extent of transforming the institution. This is evidenced by the rise of non‐governmental organizations and new public management success and implementation as a compulsory reference of any public policy and by the general concern for efficiency (instead of effectiveness), competitiveness and benchmarking (instead of public services), customers (instead of users or citizens) and market regulation (instead of state laws and public policy). Consequently, the author claims a “de‐institutionalization of the institution”, consequence of the “institutionalization of the organization”. There goes, instead of a political society, a lowered and reduced version largely known as “civil society”, where:

[…] governance is seen as a concrete manifestation of democracy, but leading the individual to become “hostage” of managerial categories and no longer a citizen. […] Is it then about increasing efficiency or weakening citizens' rights? The latter could be called liberal totalitarianism (Pesqueux, 2007, p. 169).

The final chapter provides an in‐depth discussion of corporate governance and its empirical and social origins. It points at the shadowy question of sovereignty that governance precisely helps escape: this “governance without any government” requires further investigation. Corporate governance (strictly speaking) is a direct consequence of the privatization process described in the first chapter. It evolved in a broader kind of governance, an organizational governance, resting upon “principles” and “internal control”, as well as external control from audit as a source of legitimacy. The bulimia for norms grew further at an international level and, with globalization, the phenomenon has become a global governance. So is the ideology spread, in direct relationship with the transnational expansion of capitalism and the fragmentation of international cooperation systems between sovereign states. This induces a widespread superposition of different and contradictory kinds of “laws” (hard and soft) and a shift in a political discourse of governance instead of democracy. The problem is that governance makes connections between elements (using networks such as NTICs), without integrating them into a whole; hence its inherent instability made of pluralism and cosmopolitism without being able to achieve a universal unity. This same argument explains why “civil society” (a concept that should be analyzed in details) must be coupled with a legally constituted State. Governance draws a line between owners and non owners in the grant of corporate rights, as well as civil society does for “social property” which is privatized for the sake of the interests of an increasing number of stakeholders. This leads to a management‐oriented society based on contracts, while simultaneously exempting deliberative democracy to give evidence of its representativeness, though it once was the basis for sovereignty in representative democracy. Governance has become a new principle of social justice, recognized as a fair way to organize the debate. At the same time, governance changes the understanding we may have of what it is to be a citizen: everybody who wishes to speak must now be heard in an everlasting deliberation, but not necessarily be listened to. In an appeal to what could be called bourgeois values, politeness and civility (or good manners) are crucial for their technical respect of the form of the debate (over substance, as one can notice) in a politically correct type of speech. These entail the possibility of being calculating rather than being animated with more noble values of universal benevolence toward difference. But it also gives the possibility to reach a reasonable consensus on what is fair rather than attempting one on what is good. The issue raised is then that of tolerance, so that pluralism and individualism can be made compatible, especially through the issue of multiculturalism in a no more assimilating “multinational State”.