FSS Seminar Series: Five Decades of Reforms for Local Public Services Delivery in the West
Speaker: Prof.Germà BEL, UM Distinguished Visiting Scholar
Date:17 May 2024 (Fri)
Time:11:00
Venue: E21A-G035
Abstract: In the last decades of the past century, growing criticism of the effects of government intervention in the economy led to a decline in the governments’ role in the production of goods and services largely in the West. In the domain of local governments and the delivery of public services, a wave of privatization was the main tool for reform, often through the contracting out the public service delivery. Since the results of privatization were much more modest than expected, in the first decades of this century other types of reforms have intensified. On the one hand, in terms of the provider jurisdiction (amalgamation and inter-municipal cooperation); on the other, regarding the organization of production (corporatization and remunicipalization). After five decades of local government reform, a hybridization of the local service-machine is the most common approach to public service delivery.