Competition policy and the destruction of the welfare state

Anna Yeatman

Research output: Chapter in Book / Conference PaperChapter

Abstract

Competition policy represents the marketisation of the public sector, and the loss of its identity in relation to the private sector. Competition policy redefines all government agencies and activities as businesses, and in so doing, places them on a business enterprise basis. From which point it makes sense to ask how these government businesses, like all business enterprises, should come under the framework of trade and competition policies. It also makes sense to propose that government enterprise should not have an unfair competitive advantage with regard to its now-constituted private sector competitors: this is expressed in the principle of ‘competitive neutrality’. The inexorable direction of this restructuring of the public sector is one of marketisation: the bias is against the continuation of government ownership and for the privatisation of erstwhile government enterprises (see Goot 2010); and where government funding is still required for welfare services, the relationship is contractualised as one between the funding agency and private (for-profit and not-for-profit) agencies that competitively tender for government business. Public service turns into contract management and becomes a form of ‘market managerialism’ (Considine and Painter 1997, 10). Competition policy, more precisely, refers to the institutional framework for the marketisation of the public sector. In this context, those (like the team who produced the final report of the Competition Policy Review (CPR) who engage in the formulation of competition policy, and those (like the Australian Productivity Commission) who implement and evaluate it are market managerialists writ large. The following chapter should be read as a case study of contemporary market managerialism.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationThe Triumph of Managerialism?: New Technologies of Government and Their Implications for Value
EditorsAnna Yeatman, Bogdan Costea
Place of PublicationU.K.
PublisherRowman and Littlefield
Pages103-125
Number of pages23
ISBN (Electronic)9781786604897
ISBN (Print)9781786604880
Publication statusPublished - 2018

Keywords

  • competition
  • government policy
  • managerialism
  • social service
  • welfare state
  • Australia

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Competition policy and the destruction of the welfare state'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this