"Nowhere are the failings of the neoliberal political and economic order more evident than in its signature project of privatisation. As privatisation and marketised solutions continue to fail, state intervention and public ownership are coming back, in diverse ways, to the management and governance of the economy. This chapter critically appraises the return of public ownership and its wider significance for a more progressive political economy. It is particularly concerned with the potential to create democratic forms of economy out of the crisis of neoliberal governance, whilst avoiding the failings of older hierarchical forms of state management in the twentieth century. The wider arguments are illustrated through the lens of the energy sector and the failures there of faux market solutions compared with the potential for public ownership and planned responses to deal with the climate emergency. Alternative examples of more democratic, less hierarchical forms of public ownership are illustrated."

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