Public and Social Services in Europe

From Public and Municipal to Private Sector Provision

Hellmut Wollmann, Ivan Koprić, Gérard Marcou, Hellmut Wollmann, Gérard Marcou, Ivan Koprić

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781137574985
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137574992
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Public Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book presents comparative analyses and accounts of the institutional changes that have occurred to the local level delivery of public utilities and personal social services in countries across Europe. Guided by a common conceptual frame and written by leading country experts, the book pursues a "developmental" approach to consider how the public/municipal sector-centred institutionalization of service delivery (climaxing in the 1970s) developed through its New Public Management-inspired and European Union market liberalization-driven restructuring of the 1980s and early 1990s. The book also discusses the most recent phase since the late 1990s, which has been marked by further marketization and privatization of service delivery on the one hand, and some return to public sector provision ("remunicipalization") on the other. By comprising some 20 European countries, including Central East European "transformation" countries as well as the "sovereign debt"-stricken countries of Southern Europe, the chapters of this volume cover a much broader cross section of countries than other recent publications on the same subject.  

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016

Hellmut Wollmann, Ivan Koprić and Gérard Marcou (eds.)Public and Social Services in EuropeGovernance and Public Management10.1057/978-1-137-57499-2_1

Begin Abstract

1. Comparative Study of Public and Social Services Provision: Definitions, Concepts and Methodologies

Hellmut Wollmann¹

(1)

Humboldt University Berlin, Berlin, Germany

End Abstract

1.1 Introduction

This brief introduction sets out the definitions, concepts and methodology underpinning the chapters assembled in this volume.

Selection of Countries

The chapters of this book deal with some 20 countries representing a wide range of European (EU) member states (plus Switzerland and Iceland); they cover the west-east axis, including both western European (WE) countries and central eastern European (CEE) countries, and the north-south axis, from the Nordic to the Mediterranean countries. Besides being broadly representative, this spread of countries should be conducive to cross-country and cross-policy comparisons.

1.2 Selection of Sectors of Service Provision

The chapters assembled in this volume discuss institutional developments in the provision of public services and personal social services.

The term public services is used to refer to water supply, sewage treatment, waste management, public transport and energy provision (for the French administration’s legally derived notion of service public see Marcoum, Public service provision in France, in this volume). In English and in the British context, these services are usually referred to as public utilities; in France, they are services publics industriels et commerciaux; in Italy, servizi pubblici or servizi di pubblica utilità and in Germany, Daseinsvorsorge (‘provision of the necessaries of existence’). The EU introduced the term services of general economic interest (SGEI) to refer to this service sector (see European Commission 2011; see also Bauby and Similie 2014; Marcou, ‘The Impact of EU Law’, in this volume).

In contrast, personal social services and health services relate to individual social or health needs and in EU terminology, are referred to as social services of general interest (SSGI), a category which encompasses ‘health care, childcare, care for the elderly, assistance to disabled persons or social housing’ (see European Commission 2011: 2).

These two broad service sectors are usually treated separately in the literature, but the country chapters of this volume make a point of considering both sectors to facilitate a much more comprehensive analysis and thus, yield new empirical and theoretical insights.

1.3 Institutional Approach

Within political science, distinctions are drawn between polity, politics and policy. The term policy refers to the content and results of political decision-making, politics to the processes and conflicts surrounding political decision-making and polity to the institutional/organisational structure and context in which policies are decided and implemented.

The chapters of this book take an institutionalist perspective to focus on the polity, that is, on service provision at the institutional level, first on the subnational/local level.

Variance in the Institutions Involved in Public and Social Services Provision

A kind of taxonomy (and “glossary”) of the institutions involved in service provision is given here to encourage the use of common terminology throughout the book. Whilst this attempt to construct a lingua franca may entail some loss in the substantive and cognitive differentiation and subtlety inherent in country-specific terms, it should improve readability and facilitate comparisons between countries.

• Public sector—used as a generic term—comprises the state, subnational and, in particular, municipal sectors. Where public and social services are delivered directly by public sector’s (particularly municipal sector) administrative units and personnel, one can also refer to in-house delivery or provision of services.
• The sometimes monolithic public sector may be disaggregated and decentralised at the organisational level by (horizontally) hiving off administrative units. Drawing on the principal agent theory and vocabulary, this process may also be termed agentification or agencification (see Van Thiel 2012; Torsteinsen and van Genutsen 2016). ¹
• The model of service provision that organisationally distances and disaggregates service provision from core administrative functions of the responsible public sector body, whilst ensuring that this body remains legally responsible and that services are under the aegis of an elected council and/or chief executive is called régie or régie directe (in France), muncipalizzate (in Italy), Eigenbetriebe (in Germany) or direct labour organisation (in the UK) (see Marcou, ‘The Impact of EU Law’, in this volume; Grossi et al. 2010, especially Table 10.1). In the terminology of principal agent theory, one might refer to internal agentification (see Torsteinsen and van Genutsen 2016).
• The term corporatisation (see Grossi and Reichard in this volume) has come to be widely used (also in most chapters of this volume) to describe horizontal organisational decentralisation which is directed at the creation of legally independent (private law- or public law-based) organisations or enterprises with managerial autonomy. When corporatisation is based on private law, the corporatised units are usually organised as limited companies or stock companies; public law-based corporatisation (Eigengesellschaften in Germany) makes it easier for private investors to acquire minority or majority shares in the corporation and thus, form mixed (public-private) companies and can be used to promote asset privatisation (see below). The term municipally owned enterprises (MOEs) has also gained widespread currency as well. ² In the terminology of principal agent theory, corporatisation may also be referred to as external agentification. ³
• Municipalities (and/or other public authorities) may establish inter-municipal/inter-organisational companies (sometimes legally independent) for the purpose of collaborative service provision.
• Mixed companies combine public (municipal) and private ownership. ⁴ A variant of the mixed company which has recently gained prominence is the organisational public-private partnership (PPP) which is made up of public/municipal and private shareholders and can be distinguished from contractual PPPs in which the organisation remains in public (municipal) ownership and the involvement of private investors is based on often complicated contractual arrangements. In a contractual PPP, a municipality solicits private finance for an infrastructure project and in many cases, private sector companies will also build the facilities and operate the relevant services (see Grossi and Reichard in this volume).
• The not-for-profit or third sector is essentially made up of non-public, usually non-profit-making organisations (sometimes referred to as non-governmental organisations, NGOs) that have salaried staff although they depend mainly on voluntary, unpaid labour. Some of these organisations receive significant public funding and thus, in practice, function as quasi-public organisations.
• Overlapping with the formally organised third sector is an ‘informal’ sector (see Munday 2000: 268) made up of societal and civic groups such as charities, self-help groups, family and neighbourhood networks which do not usually have a formal institutional structure and whose workers are normally unpaid.
• Outsourcing (contracting out) of public functions or services is a term used to denote the transfer of responsibility for delivery of public and social services from a public/municipal authority to an outside provider (which may be public, semi-public, private or non-public and non-profit-making). Outsourcing is usually based on a competitive procedure based on the awarding of a (usually time-limited) concession contract. In France, outsourcing (gestion déléguée, which includes recent variants) has traditionally been a core strategy for municipal service provision (see Marcou, Public service provision in France, in this volume). Outsourcing may also be referred to as functional privatisation (see Kuhlmann and Wollmann 2014: 189), but to avoid terminological confusion, it seems best to eschew the term privatisation in this context, restricting its use to material privatisation (see below).
• Material or asset privatisation occurs when public (state or municipal) assets are sold to priva...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Comparative Study of Public and Social Services Provision: Definitions, Concepts and Methodologies
• 2. The Impact of EU Law on Local Public Service Provision: Competition and Public Service
• 3. What Impact Have the European Court of Justice Decisions Had on Local Public Services?
• 4. Delivering Public Services in the United Kingdom in a Period of Austerity
• 5. Local Government Public Service Provision in France: Diversification of Management Patterns and Decentralisation Reforms
• 6. Remunicipalisation Revisited: Long-Term Trends in the Provision of Local Public Services in Germany
• 7. Local Government and the Market. The Case of Public Services and Care for the Elderly in Sweden
• 8. Local Public Services in Italy: Still Fragmentation
• 9. Delivery of Municipal Services in Spain: An Uncertain Picture
• 10. From Municipal Socialism to the Sovereign Debt Crisis: Local Services in Greece 1980–2015
• 11. Mixed System: Transformation and Current Trends in the Provision of Local Public Services in the Czech and Slovak Republics
• 12. The Evolution of Local Public Service Provision in Poland
• 13. From Municipalisation to Centralism: Changes to Local Public Service Delivery in Hungary
• 14. Local Government and Local Public Services in Croatia
• 15. Local Service Delivery in Turkey
• 16. Local Government and the Energy Sector: A Comparison of France, Iceland and the United Kingdom
• 17. Water Provision in France, Germany and Switzerland: Convergence and Divergence
• 18. Hospital Privatisation in Germany and France: Marketisation Without Deregulation?
• 19. Models of Local Public Service Delivery: Privatisation, Publicisation and the Renaissance of the Cooperative?
• 20. Variance in the Institutions of Local Utility Services: Evidence from Several European Countries
• 21. Public and Social Services in Europe: From Public and Municipal to Private Provision—And Reverse?
• Backmatter