Ten years after: revisiting the determinants of the adoption of municipal corporations for local service delivery

ABSTRACT

Research on the use of municipal corporations to deliver local and regional public services has evolved significantly in the past decade. Most of this work addresses the performance of this service-delivery mode in relation to local bureaucracies. However, much less is known about the drivers for the adoption of municipal corporations in the first place. This article reviews the main determinants of adoption – service characteristics, institutional and regulatory settings, political constraints and financial conditions – and highlights the need for comparative research across countries.

KEYWORDS:

• Municipal corporations
• public authorities
• corporatisation
• service delivery

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Germà Bel and Katarzyna Szmigiel-Rawska for their careful review and suggestions. The research on which this article is based was partially supported by the ‘Programa Operacional da Região Norte’, NORTE2020, in the context of project NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000037 (SmartEGOV) and by the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia) [Grant n.º UID/CPO/00758/2013].

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. First and foremost, I focus on the choice to establish municipal corporations with 100% of shares owned by a single municipality, since the factors contributing to the choice of mixed firms have been extensively addressed in the overview by Bel, Brown and Warner (2014).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia [UID/CPO/00758/2013];Programa Operacional da Região Norte, NORTE2020 [NORTE-01-0145- FEDER-000037 (SmartEGOV)].

Notes on contributors

António F. Tavares

António F. Tavares is an associate professor of the School of Economics and Management and member of the Research Centre in Political Science at the University of Minho, Portugal. He is also an adjunct associate professor at the United Nations University – Operating Unit on Policy-Driven Electronic Governance in Guimarães, Portugal. His research focuses on public service delivery, territorial reforms and political participation. He has published in Policy Studies Journal, Public Management Review and Local Government Studies and is the co-editor of the Urban Affairs Review.