Politicians, bureaucrats and the public–private choice in public service delivery: anybody there pushing for remunicipalization?

ABSTRACT

Empirical evidence on remunicipalization remains scarce, and even more so as regards potential differences in the roles played by politicians and bureaucrats in service delivery reform. We use information obtained from a survey of Spanish municipalities to investigate differences in the service delivery preferences of politicians and technical staff, as well as differences in their respective propensities to reform. The results we obtain suggest that bureaucrats have both a stronger preference for private participation in service delivery and for reforming services than do politicians.

KEYWORDS:

• Remunicipalization
• privatization
• service delivery
• local government

JEL Codes:

• H44
• H70
• H83
• L32
• L33

Acknowledgements

This research has enjoyed financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (ECO2016-76866-R) and the Government of Catalonia (2017 SGR644). No sponsor has been involved in the design and implementation of the study. A preliminary version of this paper was presented at a Workshop at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. We are thankful to the following for comments and suggestions: Ivo Bischoff, Tjerk Budding, Judith Clifton, Hans Friederiszick, Raymond Gradus, David Hall, Andrej Lindholst, Emanuele Lobina, Eoin Reeves, Steffen Reinhold, Martijn Schoute, Sandra van Thiel, Bart Voorn, Mildred Warner, and two anonymous reviewers.

Data availability statement

The data from the survey that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author, GB. The data are not publicly available due to privacy restrictions, their containing personal information and opinions that may compromise the privacy of the research participants (respondents).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Our survey measures the ideology of the local council, according to the survey respondent opinion. Note we do not have information about the ideology of the technical staff. However, in the case of politicians, who are either elected themselves or appointed by elected politicians to take political action within the city council, we believe it reasonable to assume they share the political ideology of the city council.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Agència de Gestió d’Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca [2017 SGR644];Secretaría de Estado de Investigación, Desarrollo e Innovación [ECO2016-76866-R].