Politics, Careers and Elections

Abstract

At the final level of analysis, or the narrow end of the funnel, are the political process and the politicians. Though the previous levels have set the parameters to what was possible, they by no means determined the outcome of privatisation of oil assets. Politicians had a choice in whether or not to sell the oil assets. This chapter explores the process by which they made that decision. While that process begins to look clearer in the latter stages of privatisation, in the beginning, when the oil asset sales took place, the situation was not as clear. Not surprisingly, most explanations of privatisation have focused on the latter stages of the Conservative programme (Marsh, 1991). Most of these theories, as discussed in Chapter 1, do not hold for the oil asset sales.