Trade-offs and Synergies: Horizontalization and legitimacy in the Swiss wastewater sector

Abstract

Recent public sector reforms have led to horizontalization, where public service providers have increased autonomy from the state. Such changes lead to queries about democratic responsiveness (input legitimacy), democratic procedures and efficacy (throughput legitimacy) and effectiveness (output legitimacy). The following question thus emerges: how and why does horizontalization affect input, output and throughput legitimacy? This inquiry is addressed by analysing two Swiss wastewater service providers with differing degrees of horizontalization. The analysis indicates that horizontalization leads to more synergies than trade-offs between the legitimacy dimensions. Particularly, input and throughput legitimacy can play a pivotal role in attaining citizens’ acceptance.

Key words:

• Horizontalization
• legitimacy
• public service provision
• wastewater sector
• Switzerland

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The main funding for this research comes from the Swiss National Science Foundation. Further funding stems from the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag).

Notes

1 The involvement of private actors is not part of the research framing. The focus is on public actors at the local level, i.e. municipalities, and how they are (re-)organized for providing public services.

2 The other aspects of throughput legitimacy delineated by Schmidt (2013), namely, transparency, accessibility and inclusiveness, are not addressed in this article.