In The Privatized State, Chiara Cordelli introduces an interesting and complex argument for the public provision of social goods and services, such as health care, education, prisons, and national security, among others. In doing so, Cordelli makes a compelling case against the widespread occurrence of privatization. The author sees privatization through a systemic lens as an overall institutional transformation of the way government performs and of the way citizens relate to one another. In doing so, Cordelli (6) links the wrong of privatization to the pursuit of legitimacy and justice as the chief purpose of political institutions: “If private actors are morphing into government, can they act with the legitimacy that government claims?” Cordelli's response is a resounding “no”: institutional justice and especially legitimacy cannot be achieved by private means.
The book is structured around three interrelated theses. First, there is a sociopolitical contention regarding the trajectory of neoliberalism,...
