중남미

The main purpose of this article is to identify causal reasons of public enterprise reform, particularly determinants of various forms of public enterprise reform. The case for this study is COMIBOL of Bolivia. Since it was nationalized in 1952, COMIBOL has been one of the most important public enterprises in Bolivia both politically and economically. In 1985, however, a severe economic crisis and the collapse of the world tin market forced the Bolivian state to restructure COMIBOL. The Bolivian state's option for restructuring COMIBOL was neither full-privatization nor no-privatization. The restructuring program of COMIBOL mainly contains laying off workers, closing unprofitable mines and contracting joint ventures with private capital. However, as one of the most important legacies of the 1952 Bolivian revolution, COMIBOL's nationalized mines were never fully privatized. According to the evidences presented in the study, economic benefits are the most important variable that determines whether some type of restructuring should be implemented or not. Also, the COMIBOL case shows that political variables were important to determine the type of public enterprise reform. Particularly, the Bolivian case verifies that both the labor union and the left show strong opposition to the privatization of COMIBOL. Therefore, the COMIBOL case confirms that the combination of high political opposition and low economic benefits led to the COMIBOL's restructuring without total privatization of mines.