Municipal Responses to Fiscal Stress

Maher, Craig; Deller, Steven C.

doi:10.1080/01900690701230184

Cited by 77 publications

(83 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…In general terms, vulnerability represents the exposure to shocks (McManus et al ; Hendrick ) and is the result of both external (e.g., dependence on grants) as well as internal (e.g., debt financing, reserves) sources, turning out to be at the interface between the environment and the organization. Rather than an objective measure of vulnerability, it is the perceived vulnerability which proved to be central in understanding patterns of financial resilience (see also Maher and Deller , ; Jimenez ). The roles of the above dimensions are further discussed in the next section.…”

Section: Exploring Financial Resilience: Dimensions and Patternsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Governmental financial resilience under austerity in Austria, England and Italy: How do local governments cope with financial shocks?

Barbera

Jones

Korać

et al. 2017

Public Administration

111

181

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The recent economic and fiscal crisis provides an opportunity for learning lessons of general and practical relevance about how governments face shocks affecting their financial conditions. This article draws on the resilience concept to investigate the organizational capacities that are deployed and/or built by local governments (LGs) to respond to such shocks, looking at their combinations and interactions with environmental conditions. The article presents the results of a multiple‐case analysis of 12 European LGs across Austria, Italy and England. The analysis allows us to highlight and operationalize different patterns of financial resilience, that is, self‐regulation, constrained or reactive adaptation, contented or powerless fatalism, that are the result of the interaction and development over time of different internal and external dimensions.

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Section: Exploring Financial Resilience: Dimensions and Patternsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Governmental financial resilience under austerity in Austria, England and Italy: How do local governments cope with financial shocks?

Barbera

Jones

Korać

et al. 2017

Public Administration

111

181

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…For example, contracting out is not uniform across local governments by size, metropolitan location, or wealth (Joassart‐Marcelli and Musso ; Hefetz et al ). Larger places tend to use more privatization, while smaller places use more cooperation to achieve cost savings (Maher and Deller ; Plata‐Díaz et al ; Zafra‐Gómez et al ). This may be a pragmatic choice for small places that lack a competitive market of service providers (Warner and Hefetz ; Maher and Deller ; Mohr et al ; Hefetz et al ).…”

Section: Public Services After the Great Recessionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Larger places tend to use more privatization, while smaller places use more cooperation to achieve cost savings (Maher and Deller ; Plata‐Díaz et al ; Zafra‐Gómez et al ). This may be a pragmatic choice for small places that lack a competitive market of service providers (Warner and Hefetz ; Maher and Deller ; Mohr et al ; Hefetz et al ). Cooperation is an increasingly popular reform because it can promote cost savings while keeping the service public (Holzer and Fry ).…”

Section: Public Services After the Great Recessionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pragmatic Municipalism: Local Government Service Delivery After the Great Recession

Kim

Warner

2016

Public Administration

103

142

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Since the Great Recession, some have argued that local governments have become ‘austerity machines’ that cut and privatize services and undermine unions. We conducted a national survey of US municipalities in 2012 to examine how service provision level and delivery methods are related to local stress and capacity, controlling for community need and place characteristics. We find that local governments are balancing the pressures of stress with community needs. They use alternative revenue sources and service delivery methods (privatization and cooperation) to maintain services. Unionization is not a barrier to innovation. Further, we find that ethnically diverse suburbs are providing more services than other suburbs, thus acting more like metro core cities. We find that the Great Recession has not dramatically shifted local government behaviour to a ‘new normal’ of fiscal austerity. Instead, we find municipalities practising ‘pragmatic municipalism’ to maintain their public role.

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“…The research design follows the empirical tradition noted above that uses large sample sizes of local governments (i.e., cities or counties) to analyze public policies, a design pioneered by the University of Chicago's Fiscal Austerity and Urban Innovation Project (Clark 2000). The data collection strategy, construction of policy variables, and statistical modeling follow the numerous studies in this tradition (for examples see Basolo and Huang 2001;Clark and Walter 1991;Clingermayer and Feiock 2001;Farmer 2011;Joassart-Marcelli and Musso 2005;Maher and Deller 2007;O'Connell 2008;Reese and Rosenfeld 2002;Sharp 2012;Sun 2010;Wood 2005). These studies employ data on local governments that are collected through surveying government officials such as city mayors and county commissioners.…”

Section: Data and Measuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Privatization, Business Attraction, and Social Services across the United States

Lobao¹,

Adua²,

Hooks³

2014

Social Problems

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Privatization, business attraction incentives, and limited social service provision are market-oriented policies that broadly concern social scientists. These policies are conventionally assumed to be widely implemented across the United States, a world model of neoliberal development. This study takes a new look at these policies, providing a first view of how they unfold across the nation at a geographic scale that drills down to the local state. We document the extent to which localities privatized their public services, used business attraction, and limited social service delivery in the last decade. Extending national-level theories of the welfare state, we focus on two sets of factors to explain where these policies are most likely to be utilized. The first, derived from the class-politics approach, emphasizes class interests such as business and unions and political-ideological context, and anticipates that these policies are utilized most in Republican leaning, pro-business, and distressed contexts. The second, derived from the political-institutional approach, emphasizes state capacity and path dependency as determinants. The analyses are based on over 1,700 localities, the majority of county governments, using unique policy data. Class-politics variables have modest relationship to neoliberal policies and show that business sector influence and public sector unions matter. The findings strongly support the importance of state capacity and path dependency. Overall our study challenges assumptions that acquiescence to neoliberal policies is widespread. Rather, we find evidence of resilience to these policies among communities across the United States.

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Municipal Responses to Fiscal Stress

Cited by 77 publications

References 2 publications

Governmental financial resilience under austerity in Austria, England and Italy: How do local governments cope with financial shocks?

Governmental financial resilience under austerity in Austria, England and Italy: How do local governments cope with financial shocks?

Pragmatic Municipalism: Local Government Service Delivery After the Great Recession

Privatization, Business Attraction, and Social Services across the United States

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