Brooks, Steven Michael Derek2006-07-282006-07-2819981998http://hdl.handle.net/10012/299Privatization of government services and infrastructure has been touted as a solution to the problems of big government, fiscal deficits and the need to rebuild infrastructure and expand service delivery throughout the world. Possible benefits include lower operating costs, more appropriate allocation and direction of resources, increased choice, increased quantity, better feedback mechanisms for the service (money rather than votes), decentralized decision making, increased speed of decision making and service delivery, and accessing creativity and expertise within the private sector, to name a few. Yet many of the market failure lessons of the past are not discussed in any depth in recent privatization literature, and few case studies are comprehensive. The market, cultural, legal, and institutional conditions necessary for these successes to occur is a critical issue. This thesis critically reviews existing world literature, theory, and evaluative frameworks in the context of two Ontario, Canada water privatizations. Twenty seven structured interviews were conducted with key stakeholders over 1996 and 1997 which identify a range of factors relevant in considering a municipal infrastructure privatization initiative. Many of the perspective s revealed are not discussed in the literature surveyed. The result has been the identification of a wide range of relevant privatization evaluation criteria that is Canadian-source and Canadian cultural and institutional-specific data, the discovery of similarities and differences of perception in stakeholder groups that should enable the process of privatization to be improved, a validation of the applicability of some of the theories reviewed, and the disclosure of the potentially unique elements of each privatization. Lastly, a process by which the infrastructure privatization decision-making process can be customized to a particular government and set of suppliers for a particular time is discussed.application/pdf12201868 bytesapplication/pdfenCopyright: 1998, Brooks, Steven Michael Derek. All rights reserved.Harvested from Collections CanadaDoctoral Thesis