Public Services after Austerity: Zombies, Suez or Collaboration?

Abstract

Public services—in the UK and elsewhere—are under considerable pressure, not just from austerity, but also from a variety of social, demographic and technological changes (in effect ‘austerity plus’). In this context, three broad options are open to policy‐makers: continue with tried‐and‐tested approaches while spending less money, which in the UK means a reliance on ‘New Public Management’ (NPM); withdraw completely from certain public services; or develop new approaches to public administration. We argue that all of these approaches have been attempted in recent years, but it is the final option that is most interesting and potentially the most beneficial. In this article, we examine experiments with these new approaches in responding to ‘austerity plus’. In particular, we examine various attempts at ‘collaboration’ in public services and discuss the risks associated with them. We conclude by setting out the extent to which policy‐makers have moved beyond NPM and suggesting some of the benefits that this could bring.

New development: Corporatization of local authorities in England in the wake of austerity 2010–2016

“…The growth of neo-liberal policies enacted through New Public Management practices of the market, competition, private sector managerialism and ultimately pseudo-profit have been prevalent in reform of public services and rolling back the state since the 1980's (Pollitt, 2018). These developments have again been at the forefront of public sector reforms in the wake of the austerity that has followed the global financial crisis (Griffiths and Kippin, 2017). Perhaps nowhere more so than in English local government, which has experienced a real-term budget cut of nearly 50% since 2011/12 and where there is substantial appetite for alternative ways of "doing more with less" (National Audit Office, 2018).…”

Why create government corporations? An examination of the determinants of corporatization in the Canadian public sector

“…Previous empirical studies yielded contradictory findings on the link between economic variables and corporatization. Examining trends in corporatization at the local level in England, Ferry et al (2018, p. 479) point out that corporatization greatly increased in the wake of austerity (see also Griffiths & Kippin, 2017). Andrews et al (2020) also found that English local governments experiencing at least some types of fiscal difficulties, such as higher debt service charges, were indeed more likely to set up public corporations.…”

The Contours of State Retreat from Collaborative Environmental Governance under Austerity

“…It has been argued that 'state retreat' offers a rational theoretical explanation of the consequences of national state austerity programmes on socio-ecological partnerships operating under governance modalities [47]. State retreat has been described as a multi-dimensional diminution of the state from (what is often considered) normative positionality, forms, and substance in collaborative governance, towards more basic forms and substance of engagement [48]. This can include state withdrawal from governance fora and decision-making processes [27,42], moving away from the 'collaboration ethic' implicit in normative governance theory [49] and, ultimately, 'rescaling' the role of the state in governance [25,43,50].…”