A Politics of Inevitability

At present there are no substantial studies of the BWB partial privatisation in English or German. The topic is one of much interest given the ongoing public, media and academic interest in the BWB case. Debates over the possible remunicipalisation of BWB are particularly potent in this election year and remunicipalisation of public service companies is a stated policy objective of Die Linke in Berlin. More generally, interest in remunicipalisation is growing in Germany and elsewhere as the wave of privatisations conducted in the 1980s-1990s becomes increasingly problematised by academics, NGOs and even politicians and practitioners. As such the book provides a timely account of one of the most controversial and oft-cited privatisations in Europe.
On a theoretical level, the framework draws on Neo-Foucauldian Governmentality Studies and Actor-network Theory (ANT). In translating these social theories into the study of politics, the book contributes to the emerging post-positivist literature on policy studies and represents an innovative attempt to explore the usefulness of two increasingly influential approaches. Finally, the book engages with, and draws together the disparate literatures on 'post-politics' (or 'post-political' or 'post-democracy'). Interest in the field is also on the rise (in Germany: see recent edition (Heft Nr. 1/2/2011) of der Zeitschrift 'Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte' on 'postdemokratie'). In exploring the merits of this means of describing contemporary politics, the book should be of interest to scholars of political science but also those in the fields of political theory, human geography and political sociology.