THE PRIVATIZATION OF HUMAN SERVICES: MYTHS, SOCIAL CAPITAL AND CIVIL SOCIETY

INTRODUCTION

At times it seems that privatization in general and the privatization of human services in specific are blamed for most of the ills that plague the social welfare system today. At least this is the conclusion one might draw from reading much of the public administration, social welfare and social work literature dealing with the subject. Privatization has been accused of: hollowing out the state (Peters, 1994), eroding the administrative state (Moe, 1987), deinstitualizing social welfare (Abramowitz, 1986, 1984), "commodifying" human need (Karger, 1994), altering the character of non-governmental organizations (Salamon, 2002), destroying the non-profit sector (Netting et McMurtry, 1994), commercializing social welfare (Smith & Lipsky, 1999), creating poverty profiteers (Ryan, 1999), and the author's personal favorite, ignoring issues of capacity building (Brodkin, Fuqua and Thoren, 2002). This literature takes what perhaps can best be described as a "government" perspective in that it is based on an implicit, but not necessarily explicit, a priori assumption that publicly funded programs, services and activities should be directly provided by government.