Ethical Futures and Public-Private Partnerships: Peering Far Down the Track

This article employs an institutional perspective in formulating predictions about the ethical futures of privatization partnerships. Although this paper focuses on ethical concerns in the U.S. public sector, it incorporates a multinational dimension in (a) comparing the meaning of privatization among societies and (b) probing privatization financing in the “global economy.” Five assumptions that flow from institutional reasoning are made explicit as supports for subsequent predictions. The institutional logic shifts privatization conversation away from conventional debate about “competition” and “efficiency” toward centralizing forces in both sectors in response to globalization. In that regard, this study identifies the systemic erosion of (local) community integrity as the key privatization problem of the future.