The Provision of Public Services in Europe: Between State, Local Government and Market

doi:10.1080/14719037.2011.558244

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The Provision of Public Services in Europe: Between State, Local Government and Market

Journal Article•DOI•

The Provision of Public Services in Europe: Between State, Local Government and Market

Ricardo Corrêa Gomes¹•Institutions (1)

University of Brasília¹

13 Jun 2011-Public Management Review (Routledge)-Vol. 13, Iss: 5, pp 753-755

About: This article is published in Public Management Review.The article was published on 2011-06-13. It has received 39 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Public finance & Public sector.

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Journal Article•DOI•

'Don’t call me resilient again!' The New Urban Agenda as immunology … or ... what happens when communities refuse to be vaccinated with ‘smart cities’ and indicators

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Maria Kaika

17 Mar 2017-Environment and Urbanization

TL;DR: The Habitat III Conference's New Urban Agenda hails a "paradigm shift" for pursuing the sustainable development goals (SDGs), however, the new call for safe, resilient, sustainable and inclusive c...

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Abstract: The Habitat III Conference’s New Urban Agenda hails a “paradigm shift” for pursuing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, the new call for “safe, resilient, sustainable and inclusive c...

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277 citations

Cites background from "The Provision of Public Services in..."

...Desmond, Matthew (2012), “Eviction and the Reproduction of Urban Poverty”, American Journal of Sociology Vol 118, No 1, pages 88–133; also García Lamarca, Melissa and Maria Kaika (2016), “ “Mortgaged Lives”: The Biopolitics of Debt and Housing Financialisation”, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers Vol 41, No 3, pages 313–327....
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...Manyena, S B (2006), “The Concept of Resilience Revisited”, Disasters Vol 30, No 4, pages 433– 450. Martinez-Alier, Juan (1997), “Environmental Justice (Local and Global)”, Capitalism Nature Socialism Vol 8, No 1, pages 91–107. Muchhala, Bhumika (2016), “DG indicators challenged by many UN member states”, TWN Info Service on Health Issues, 24 March, accessed 20 October 2016 at http://www.twn.my/title2/health.info/2016/ hi160304.htm. Odemerho, Francis O (2015), “Building climate change resilience through bottom-up adaptation to flood risk in Warri, Nigeria”, Environment and Urbanization Vol 27, No 1, pages 139–160. Olsson, P, V Galaz and W J Boonstra (2014), “Sustainability Transformations: A Resilience Perspective”, Ecology and Society Vol 19, No 4....
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...Notably the work of: Manyena, S B (2006), “The Concept of Resilience Revisited”, Disasters Vol 30, No 4, pages 433–450; also Bouzarovski, S, J Salukvadze and M Gentile (2011), “A Socially Resilient Urban Transition? The Contested Landscapes of Apartment Building Extensions in Two Post-Communist Cities”, Urban Studies Vol 48, No 13, pages 2689–2714; Folke, Carl (2006), we might find that resilience, safety, sustainability and inclusiveness are not the issues we should be focusing our agendas on....
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...Manyena, S B (2006), “The Concept of Resilience Revisited”, Disasters Vol 30, No 4, pages 433– 450. Martinez-Alier, Juan (1997), “Environmental Justice (Local and Global)”, Capitalism Nature Socialism Vol 8, No 1, pages 91–107....
[...]
...Manyena, S B (2006), “The Concept of Resilience Revisited”, Disasters Vol 30, No 4, pages 433– 450. Martinez-Alier, Juan (1997), “Environmental Justice (Local and Global)”, Capitalism Nature Socialism Vol 8, No 1, pages 91–107. Muchhala, Bhumika (2016), “DG indicators challenged by many UN member states”, TWN Info Service on Health Issues, 24 March, accessed 20 October 2016 at http://www.twn.my/title2/health.info/2016/ hi160304.htm. Odemerho, Francis O (2015), “Building climate change resilience through bottom-up adaptation to flood risk in Warri, Nigeria”, Environment and Urbanization Vol 27, No 1, pages 139–160....
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Journal Article•DOI•

Re-municipalisation in the early twenty-first century: water in France and energy in Germany

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David Hall¹, Emanuele Lobina¹, Philipp Terhorst¹•Institutions (1)

University of Greenwich¹

22 Apr 2013-International Review of Applied Economics

TL;DR: The public sector paradigm has shown a remarkable resilience, underpinning the development of European public services for almost a century, compared with the three decades of domination by the private sector as discussed by the authors.

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Abstract: Changes between state and market production of public services can be analysed as ‘pendulum’ swings, reflecting political struggles. The extensive re-municipalisations in the water sector and France and the energy sector in Germany provide evidence on this question. This is not the result of a coordinated institutional initiative, but a reflection of common political and economic factors. The most important of these are the greater efficiency of public sector provision, and the greater degree of control over the effective achievement of public policy objectives. These are closely related to the historic factors driving public ownership in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. A distinctive feature of this twenty-first century tendency is the prominent role of green parties and environmental policies. The public sector paradigm has historically shown a remarkable resilience, underpinning the development of European public services for almost a century, compared with the three decades of domination by the...

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160 citations

Cites background from "The Provision of Public Services in..."

...Newly established associations of public operators – ‘France Eau Publique’, ‘Allianz der öffentlichen Wasserwirtschaft’, ‘Verbandkommunaler Unternehmen’, and ‘Aqua Publica Europea’ among others – appear well positioned to play a strategic role in the generation and dissemination of knowledge and advocacy of remunicipalisation in Europe....
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...The public sector paradigm has historically shown a remarkable resilience, underpinning the development of European public services for almost a century, compared with the three decades of domination by the market paradigm and its currently vacillating foundations....
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...Instead, we turn our attention to the resurgence of public ownership in municipal service delivery, a phenomenon observed in Europe (Wollmann and Marcou 2010), the most notable example of which is arguably the return in 2010 to municipal water operations in Paris....
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...Since the mid-nineteenth century, municipal ownership of water and gas and electricity supply operations surged across Europe until becoming pervasive in the early twentieth century....
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...The question however needs to be addressed: why do we not observe in other European countries re-municipalisation on the scale it is happening in the French water sector or the German energy sector?...
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Journal Article•DOI•

The efficiency and effectiveness of municipally owned corporations: a systematic review

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B. Voorn¹, M.L. van Genugten¹, S. van Thiel¹•Institutions (1)

Radboud University Nijmegen¹

20 Apr 2017-Local Government Studies

TL;DR: A systematic review of public administration articles published between 2001 and 2015 on the efficiency and effectiveness of municipal owned corporations (MOCs) is presented in this paper. But little remains known about the effectiveness of MOCs.

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Abstract: Municipally owned corporations (MOCs) are increasingly utilised to provide local public services, but little remains known about their efficiency and effectiveness. In this article, we offer a typology of MOCs, explore the variables that affect their behaviour, and perform a systematic review of public administration articles published between 2001 and 2015 on their efficiency and effectiveness. We find that MOCs are often more efficient than local bureaucracies in the provision of services such as refuse collection, water distribution, and transit services, although they also have high initial failure rates. We conclude that municipally owned corporations are a viable means for delivering some local public services for localities capable of initiating and managing complex contracts. In light of the scarcity of literature on this topic, our conclusions remain tentative, and we encourage additional research into this growing phenomenon.

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117 citations

Journal Article•DOI•

Local Government Reforms in (Seven) European Countries: Between Convergent and Divergent, Conflicting and Complementary Developments

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Hellmut Wollmann¹•Institutions (1)

Humboldt University of Berlin¹

24 Jan 2012-Local Government Studies

TL;DR: In this paper, the United Kingdom/England, Germany, Sweden, France, Italy, Spain and Hungary are compared in terms of the role of local government in the expansion of local governance networks.

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Abstract: In selecting the United Kingdom/England, Germany, Sweden, France, Italy, Spain and Hungary as comparative cases, and in focusing on three institutional tracks (local leadership, internal administration and external operation), this article first discusses, on the one hand, whether local government has been institutionally strengthened, and on the other, whether governance-type actor networks have expanded in the countries under consideration and whether, across-countries, this developments has shown convergence or divergence. Secondly, it addresses the question of whether the two currents (strengthening of traditional local government and expansion of local governance networks) are conflicting or complementary.

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79 citations

Journal Article•DOI•

The Evaluation of Institutional Reforms at Sub-national Government Levels: A Still Neglected Research Agenda

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Sabine Kuhlmann¹, Hellmut Wollmann²•Institutions (2)

German University of Administrative Sciences, Speyer¹, Humboldt University of Berlin²

23 Sep 2011-Local Government Studies

TL;DR: In this article, the authors conceptualize institutional policies (territorial and functional reforms) as a particular type of public policy and contrast them analytically, conceptually and methodologically with "normal" substantial policies.

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Abstract: This article is meant to take a noteworthy step towards conceptually promoting the evaluation of institutional reform policies in the sub-national space. It aims to apply pertinent approaches of evaluation to the field of institutional reform policies in the intergovernmental setting and thus to contribute to a research field that arguably has so far been a ‘missing link’ in policy evaluation. The authors conceptualise institutional policies (territorial and functional reforms) as a particular type of public policy and contrast them analytically, conceptually and methodologically with ‘normal’ substantial policies. They reveal particular problems of measurement and of finding relevant indicators to evaluate the results of institutional reforms, one of which is the assessment of the transaction costs of reforms. Finally, an analytical framework for the evaluation of functional and territorial reform policies is suggested that makes a distinction between ‘institution evaluation’ and ‘performance ev...

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58 citations