The Provision of Public Services in Europe

Wollmann, Hellmut; Marćou, Gérard

doi:10.4337/9781849807227

Cited by 92 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…Wilks (2007) uses the term 'boardization' about the explicit encouragement in British central government to establish boards modelled on principles of private sector corporate governance. This paucity of research is highly paradoxical given the large scope and growing importance of corporate forms in local government (Aars and Ringkjøb, 2011;Grossi and Reichard, 2008;Grossi et al, 2015;Wollmann and Marcou, 2010). However, recently Van Thiel (2015) developed a useful typology for studying boards of public sector organizations.…”

Section: Corporatization Represents Fundamental Changes In Local Govementioning

confidence: 99%

“…During the last decades, we have witnessed a considerable growth in municipal companies in many Western countries, often labelled corporatization (Aars and Ringkjøb, 2011;Grossi and Reichard, 2008;Grossi et al, 2015;Wollmann and Marcou, 2010). Some municipal companies operate in commercial markets in competition with private businesses (for example parking and industrial waste), others in regulated quasi-markets (for example household waste).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The meaning of institutional logics for performance assessment in boards of municipal companies

Olsen

Solstad

Torsteinsen

2017

Public Money & Management

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Municipal companies are hybrid organizations hosting multiple institutional logics operating at the interface between the public and private sector. We propose an analytical framework inspired by the institutional logics perspective, which can help us understand how performance assessment in municipal corporate boards develops as they navigate between the interests of the owner, the external stakeholders and the company.

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Section: Corporatization Represents Fundamental Changes In Local Govementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The meaning of institutional logics for performance assessment in boards of municipal companies

Olsen

Solstad

Torsteinsen

2017

Public Money & Management

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“…A large number of municipalities are involved in this system, with an average of 2.5 companies each, reaching an average of 9.5 companies for municipalities with more than 100,000 inhabitants (Citroni et al, 2012). This recourse to private-law companies totally or partially owned by municipalities is particularly high in Italy compared with other EU countries, paralleled only by Germany (Wollmann and Marcou, 2010).…”

Section: Strong Bottom-up Implementationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The creation of these companies is a widespread phenomenon in Italy, as well as in other European countries (see Wollmann and Marcou, 2010;Bortolotti et al, 2009): a recent survey by the Court of Accounts (Corte, 2010) counted 5860 bodies (companies or otherwise) fully or partially owned by 5928 Italian municipalities (out of about 8000), testifying to a constant increase in their number since the mid-1990s (see also Citroni et al, 2012). A more recent survey has recorded 5512 firms (Unioncamere, 2011), showing an increase from 4806 in 2003 to 4874 in 2005.…”

Section: Strong Bottom-up Implementationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although technically corporatisation only implies formal privatisation of municipal undertakings, that is, their transformation into private-law entities, in several European countries (in particular Italy, Germany, Spain, and France), this strategy has been increasingly paralleled with material privatization, that is, the partial divestment of public capital through involving private capital (Bel and Fageda, 2010;Wollmann and Marcou, 2010). Corporatisation and privatization in its two meanings are often intertwined in the pro-market rhetoric promoted by many supra-national organisations, such as the World Bank, in their guidelines to remedy the fiscal crisis of the state (O'Connor, 1973), and with the lack of investments and innovation in public services, on the one hand, and the poor performance of many public undertakings, especially in the utilities sector, on the other (Calabrò, 2011;Osborne, 2011).…”

Section: Political Representation In Municipal Corporations: a Theorementioning

confidence: 99%

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Representation through corporatisation: municipal corporations in Italy as arenas for local democracy

Citroni

Lippi

Profeti

2014

Eur. Pol. Sci. Rev.

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The literature on Public Utilities has increasingly shown that the adoption of corporate governance tools for the management of public services in local policy-making has given rise to a considerable reshaping of political strategies and practices. Corporatisation should be understood as not merely a policy instrument, but also as a new opportunity for local politicians to adjust their preferences, to deal with various interests, and to build unusual coalitions. Corporatisation may (and does) influence the concrete operation of local political systems. Today, the boards of municipal enterprises, as well as the public–private partnerships stemming from this emerging tendency towards corporatisation, can be conceived as both actors of local policy-making and arenas in which a number of functions traditionally associated with the mechanisms of electoral representation are performed: inter- and intra-party bargaining, recruitment of élites, and negotiation with local and ‘external’ stakeholders. The paper illustrates the impact of corporatisation on local representation mechanisms in Italy, considering its opaque side with specific reference to the problem of democratic accountability and control, and the creation of new local oligarchies. Empirical evidence is provided from research on municipal enterprises in six different Italian regions. Statistical data on companies (amount of social capital, fields of activity, private and public shareholders, etc.), as well as qualitative data, are analysed in order to show how corporatisation has provided local actors with unusual (and often non-transparent) channels of political representation and public–private bargaining.

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Central‐Local Relations in French Energy Policy‐Making: Towards a New Pattern of Territorial Governance

Poupeau

2013

Env Pol Gov

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After a long period of centralization, local authorities have been taking a new place in the French energy sector. This revival began in the 1990s with the process of deregulation, which gave them new room for manoeuvre. This continued into the 2000s, when energy efficiency and climate change issues were set on the political agenda. This process led many practitioners and academic researchers to consider these two last decades as a turning point, which initiates a new model of governance, one that is far more decentralized than in the past. Here, we discuss this hypothesis and show that this recent 'activism' at local level associated with a change in State intervention has been leading to a new pattern of territorial governance in France that is not at odds with the past but rather is in continuity with it. Using the neo-institutional approach developed by James Mahoney and Kathleen Thelen, we focus on three main dimensions that play a 'homeostatic' role: the production structure, ideas and institutional arrangements. This leads us to develop an interpretation of ongoing changes in terms of an 'aggiornamento' of the former pattern of governance, rather than any real breakdown.

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The Provision of Public Services in Europe

Cited by 92 publications

References 10 publications

The meaning of institutional logics for performance assessment in boards of municipal companies

The meaning of institutional logics for performance assessment in boards of municipal companies

Representation through corporatisation: municipal corporations in Italy as arenas for local democracy

Central‐Local Relations in French Energy Policy‐Making: Towards a New Pattern of Territorial Governance

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