The Impact of Privatization on United Arab Emirates Federal Public Sector

Abstract

It is widely believed that since privatization involves the transfer of public ownership to private sector, it thereby reflects a contraction of public administration role in society. Despite the rights and wrongs of this assertion, the 1980s and 1990s have witnessed the hegemony of the anti-government political and economic thought. This hegemony has resulted in policies directed mainly toward strengthening the market and reducing the public sector role (In this article the terms public administration, public sector and government are used as synonymous). But not all types of privatization policies affect equally the size of the public sector. However, the major theoretical contention of this article is that privatization does not necessarily and inevitably leads to reduction in government size or its scope of public administration as measured by the resources put at the disposable of government.