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The privatized state. Chiara Cordelli. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2020. 352 pp. $39.95 (cloth)
The COVID-19 pandemic brought the state's role back to the forefront of domestic and international political life. Unlike private actors, the state showed that it could cope with fundamental existential problems that face its population. Some states deeply involved in their health-care system had better results than those who had ceded the sector to private, profit-making interests. The pandemic has lessons for privatization and the state's role in providing health care and other services. Chiara Cordelli's The Privatized State deserves attention because it uses a novel dialectical philosophical investigations approach and presents new material. The book aims at no less than rebuilding the public side of the state. It has two central questions. First, if private actors are taking on public service roles, can they act with the legitimacy of government? Second, can a government morphed into a network of private actors still govern those subject to its rules legitimately? (p. 6) The book's central thesis emerges from its answers to these two questions. According to Cordelli, privatization undermines the very essence of a democratic state, its role, functions, significance, and, most importantly, its legitimacy. Privatization risks increased corruption and inequality and therefore constituted a threat to human freedom. Since the state is the party carrying out the privatization process, it is making itself less legitimate in the eyes of its population because the services it is supposed to provide are delivered in the pursuit of private profit. The book also has a theoretical agenda. It seeks to contribute to fundamental questions in political philosophy and democratic theory. First, the book contains an account of the foundations and limits of democratic authority. Second, it is committed to the idea of rational independence (chapter 2). Third, it delves into the agency question and develops a lawmaking theory grounded on joint intentional action (chapters 5 and 6). The book addresses these topics through the lens of privatization, but may be read independently of it