The central argument of this article is that post-colonial states operate--and have always operated, due to their roots in colonialism and capitalism--according to an "ethos of privatization," through which state agents derive private benefit from positions ostensibly responsible for providing public services. The article offers a framework for understanding the ethos of privatization as central to state behavior that is based on insights from literatures in four areas: global education policy, political economy, world systems theory, and post-colonial studies. The article demonstrates the theoretical and methodological value of this framework for producing critical public policy knowledge by applying it to the case of educational privatization in Honduras. The article concludes with a discussion of the benefits of this framework, particularly vis-à-vis more established approaches rooted in the policy sociology literature.