n.
The act of nationalizing, or the state of being nationalized.
| Dictionary: Na·tion·al·i·za·tion |
The act of nationalizing, or the state of being nationalized.
| 5min Related Video: nationalization |
| Investment Dictionary: Deprivatization |
The act of transferring ownership in various segments of the economy from the private sector to the public sector. Deprivatization often occurs when a government attempts to maintain the stability of its critical infrastructure during periods of economic distress.
Also known as "nationalization".
Investopedia Says:
Deprivatization generally occurs in the areas of transportation, electricity generation, natural gas, water supply and healthcare because governments want to ensure these sectors are functioning properly so that the country can continue to run smoothly. In addition, electrical, natural gas and hydro companies tend to be monopolies, and governments will often want to have control in these areas to ensure that consumers have access to these essential services at a reasonable cost.
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| Financial & Investment Dictionary: Nationalization |
Takeover of a private company's assets or operations by a government. The company may or may not be compensated for the loss of assets. In developing nations, an operation is typically nationalized if the government feels the company is exploiting the host country and exporting too high a proportion of the profits. By nationalizing the firm, the government hopes to keep profits at home. In developed countries, industries are often nationalized when they need government subsidies to survive. For instance, the French government nationalized steel and chemical companies in the mid-1980s in order to preserve jobs that would have disappeared if free market forces had prevailed. In some developed countries, however, nationalization is carried out as a form of national policy, often by Socialist governments, and is not designed to rescue ailing industries.
| Political Dictionary: nationalization |
The transfer of private assets into public ownership, in Britain usually in the form of a public corporation. The main wave of nationalization in Britain was under the Labour Government of 1945-51 when public utilities such as electricity, gas, and the railways, and basic industries such as coal, were brought into public ownership. The steel industry was nationalized, then partially denationalized by the succeeding Conservative Government, only to be renationalized by the Labour Government of 1966-70. Aerospace and shipbuilding were nationalized by the Labour Government of 1974-9. By this time, failing companies such as British Leyland were also coming into public ownership, but with government shareholdings placed under the supervision of the National Enterprise Board rather than as public corporations. The political, constitutional, and administrative problems associated with nationalization created an active subfield of British political science which addressed such questions as what form the relationship between government and the public corporations should take and how Parliament could secure the accountability of the nationalized industries.
— Wyn Grant
| British History: nationalization |
Although the 1945 Labour government was chiefly responsible for enlarging the public sector of the British economy to over 20 per cent of GDP, coal, railway, and even land nationalization had been advocated by Edwardian socialists and radicals. The First World War boosted the credibility of state intervention in industry and in 1918 the Labour Party committed itself to ‘common ownership of the means of production’.
The Second World War gave further impetus to calls for public ownership; the succeeding Labour government followed its 1945 manifesto ‘Let Us Face the Future’ and nationalized the Bank of England, Cable&Wireless, coal (1946), inland transport, electricity (1947), gas (1948), and iron and steel (1949). Party-political strife over iron and steel (denationalized in 1953 but renationalized by Labour in 1967) scarcely detracted from the acceptance of Attlee's ‘mixed economy’ by the Conservatives. However, the Thatcher governments halted the process and began a ‘privatization’ programme in 1981; by 1996 the public sector of the economy had been virtually eliminated.
| Columbia Encyclopedia: nationalization |
Privatization, the reverse process, has become widespread, however, with socialism's loss of credibility. Great Britain sold off many of its public companies, such as British Telecom; France sold 65 state-owned companies in 1988; and the collapse of Communist dictatorships in E Europe and the former Soviet Union has inspired large-scale privatization in some of the nations in that region, in some instances after distributing government shares to the public. Housing has also been privatized on a large scale in Britain, and privatization has been proposed for public housing in the United States. Developing nations, too, have begun to privatize. In the United States, the term has also been broadly applied to the contracting out of the management of public schools, prisons, airports, sanitation services, and a variety of other government-owned institutions, especially at the state and local levels.
Bibliography
See J. Margolis, ed., Public Economics (1969); G. L. Reid and K. Allen, Nationalized Industries (1970); T. Prosser, Nationalized Industries (1986); E. D. Sclar, You Don't Always Get What You Pay For (2000).
| Economics Dictionary: nationalization |
A government takeover of a private business.
| Politics: nationalization |
The taking over of private property by a national government.
| Wikipedia: Nationalization |
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Nationalization, also spelled nationalisation, is the act of taking an industry or assets into the public ownership of a national government or state. Nationalization usually refers to private assets, but may also mean assets owned by lower levels of government, such as municipalities, being state operated or owned by the state. The opposite of nationalization is usually privatization or de-nationalisation, but may also be municipalization. A renationalization occurs when state-owned assets are privatized and later nationalized again, often when a different political party or faction is in power. A renationalization process may also be called reverse privatization.
The motives for nationalization are political as well as economic. It is a central theme of certain brands of 'state socialist' policy that the means of production, distribution and exchange, should be owned by the state on behalf of the people to allow for rational allocation and operation, and rational planning or control of the economy. Many socialists believe that public ownership enables people to exercise full democratic control over the means whereby they earn their living and provides an effective means of redistributing wealth and income more equitably.
Nationalized industries, charged with operating in the public interest, may be under strong political and social pressures to give much more attention to externalities. They may be obliged to operate some loss making activities where social benefits are clearly greater than social costs - for example, rural, postal and transport services. As an instance, the United States Postal Service is guaranteed its nationalised status by the Constitution. The government has recognized these social obligations and, in some cases, provides subsidies for such non-commercial operations.
Since the nationalised industries are state owned, the government is responsible for meeting any debts incurred by these industries. The nationalized industries do not normally borrow from the domestic market other than for short-term borrowing. However, if profitable, the profit is often used as a means to finance other state services such as social programs and government research which can help lower the tax burden.
Nationalization may occur with or without compensation to the former owners. If it takes place without compensation it is a case of expropriation. Nationalization is distinguished from property redistribution in that the government retains control of nationalized property. Some nationalizations take place when a government seizes property acquired illegally. For example, the French government seized the car-makers Renault because its owners had collaborated with the Nazi occupiers of France.
A key issue in nationalization is payment of compensation to the former owner. The most controversial nationalizations, known as expropriations, are those where no compensation, or an amount far below the likely market value of the nationalized assets, is paid. Many nationalizations through expropriation have come after revolutions.
The traditional Western stance on compensation was expressed by United States Secretary of State Cordell Hull, during the 1938 Mexican nationalization of the petroleum industry, that compensation should be "prompt, effective and adequate." According to this view, the nationalizing state is obligated under international law to pay the deprived party the full value of the property taken. The opposing position has been taken mainly by developing countries, claiming that the question of compensation should be left entirely up to the sovereign state, in line with the Calvo Doctrine. Communist states have held that no compensation is due, based on socialist notions of private properties.
In 1962, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 1803, "Permanent Sovereignty over National Resources", which states that in the event of nationalization, the owner "shall be paid appropriate compensation in accordance with international law." In doing so, the UN rejected both the traditional Calvo-doctrinist view and the Communist view. The term "appropriate compensation" represents a compromise between the traditional views, taking into account the need of developing countries to pursue reform even without the ability to pay full compensation, and the Western concern for protection of private property.
When nationalizing a large business, the cost of compensation is so great that many legal nationalizations have happened when firms of national importance run close to bankruptcy and can be acquired by the government for little or no money. A classic example is the UK nationalization of the British Leyland Motor Corporation. At other times, governments have considered it important to gain control of institutions of strategic economic importance, such as banks or railways, or of important industries struggling economically. The case of Rolls-Royce plc, nationalized in 1971, is an interesting blend of these two arguments. This policy was sometimes known as ensuring government control of the "commanding heights" of the economy, to enable it to manage the economy better in terms of long-term development and medium-term stability. The extent of this policy declined in the 1980s and 1990s as governments increasingly privatized industries that had been nationalized, replacing their strategic economic influence with use of the tax system and of interest rates.
Nonetheless, national and local governments have seen the advantage of keeping key strategic assets in institutions that are not strongly profit-driven and can raise funds outside the public-sector constraints, but still retain some public accountability. Examples from the last five years in the United Kingdom include the vesting of the British railway infrastructure firm Railtrack in the not-for-profit company Network Rail, and the divestment of much council housing stock to "arms-length management companies", often with mutual status.
The Castro government gradually expropriated all foreign-owned private companies after the Cuban Revolution of 1959. Most of these companies were owned by U.S. corporations and individuals. Bonds at 4.5% interest over twenty years were offered to U.S. companies, but the offer was rejected by U.S. ambassador Philip Bonsal, who requested the compensation up front.[2] Only a minor amount, $1.3 million, was paid to U.S. interests before deteriorating relations ended all cooperation between the two governments.[2] The United States established a registry of claims against the Cuban government, ultimately developing files on 5,911 specific companies. The Cuban government has refused to discuss the effective and adequate compensation of U.S. claims. The United States government continues to insist on compensation for U.S. companies. In 1966-68, the Castro government nationalized all remaining privately owned business entities in Cuba, down to the level of street vendors.
Nationalization in France dates back to the 'regies' or state monopolies first organized under the Ancien Régime, for example, the monopoly on tobacco sales. Communications companies France Telecom and La Poste are relics of the state postal and telecommunications monopolies.
There was a major expansion of the nationalised sector following World War II.[3] A second wave followed in 1982.
The Paris regional transport operator, Regie Autonome des Transports Parisiens (RATP), can also be counted as a nationalised industry.
The German railways were nationalised after World War I. Partial privatisation of Deutsche Bahn is currently underway, as of 2008.
Most enterprises in East Germany were nationalised following World War II. After reunification, an agency, Treuhand, was established to return them to private ownership. However, due to structural and economic problems inherent in the previous regime, many of these had to be liquidated.
The nationalised banks were credited by some, including Home minister P. Chidambaram, to have helped the Indian economy withstand the global financial crisis of 2007-2009.[4][5]
Railways in the Republic of Ireland were nationalised in the 1940s as Coras Iompair Eireann.
The regime of Benito Mussolini extended nationalisation, creating the Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale (IRI) as a State holding company for struggling firms, including the car maker Alfa Romeo. A parallel body, Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi (Eni) was set up to manage State oil and gas interests.
During the administration of Ferdinand Marcos, important companies such as PLDT, Philippine Airlines, Meralco and the Manila Hotel were nationalized. Other companies were sometimes absorbed into these government-owned corporations, as well as other companies, such as Napocor and the Philippine National Railways, which in their own right are monopolies (exceptions are Meralco and the Manila Hotel). Today, these companies have been reprivatized and some, such as PLDT and Philippine Airlines, have been de-monopolized. Others, like government-formed and owned Napocor, are in the process of privatization.
After the Carnation Revolution, the Junta de Salvação Nacional (temporary government) nationalized all the banking, insurance, petrol and industrial companies. Along with the telecommunications companies, which were state-owned even before the Revolution, all the nationalized companies were reprivatized.
2008: BPN - Banco Português de Negócios bank nationalised to prevent its collapse.
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The following companies/industries were the subject of nationalisation in the given year:
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