The financialization of local governments—the case of financial rationality in the management of Norwegian hydroelectric utilities

Abstract

Abstract Research on the diminishing distance between global financial markets and traditional nonfinancial actors has increased dramatically over the last decade, most commonly captured in the notion of ‘financialization’. This literature has largely been preoccupied with a confluence of structural changes in the state and in the economy that advance the power and scope of financial capital. However, scholars have also provided evidence for cultural change in the framework in which people think about finance and property. Despite the fact that governments have increasingly engaged in heterodox financial market practices, this culturalized analysis has not yet been extended to the public sector. Based on interview data from Norwegian municipal owners of hydroelectric utilities, this article suggests that a rationality attuned to a financialized world economy is disseminating into public sector management. The article concludes by discussing what this means in a sector traditionally governed by a logic rather alien to that of global finance.