Re-municipalization of public services: trend or hype?

ABSTRACT

Re-municipalization is part of a broader set of reverse privatization reforms. We argue the term re-municipalization lacks conceptual clarity, confusing municipal level reversals from national ones, new service delivery from reversals, and mixed market positions from full public control. This conceptual confusion makes measurement of re-municipalization difficult. While more case studies are being discovered, quantitative time series studies do not show remunicipalization is increasing. Much case study based research argues remunicipalization is politically transformative, but quantitative research generally finds re-municipalization to be part of a pragmatic market management process, a position confirmed by the papers in this special issue.

KEYWORDS:

• Re-municipalization
• Public Services
• Reverse privatization

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge support from the Department of Accounting of School of Business and Economics for organizing a workshop ‘Remunipalisation of municipal services in Europe and the US: a trendor a hype? This workshop took place on 14 January 2019 at theVrije Universiteit Amsterdam and several papers in this special issue were presented there.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Corporate Europe Observatory’s “water re-municipalisation tracker” is at http://www.remunicipalisation.org/front/page/remunicipalisation_wave.

Additional information

Funding

Judith Clifton acknowledges research support under the Erasmus + Jean Monnet Chair on European Economic Policy for Business and Civil Society, 586909 EPP 1 2017 ES EPPJMO CHAIR 2O17-20 [586909 EPP 1 2017 ES EPPJMO CHAIR 2O17-20]; Raymond Gradus acknowledges support from the Department of Accounting of School of Business and Economics for organizing a workshop ‘Remunipalisation of municipal services in Europe and US: a trend or a hype? Germà Bel acknowledges financial support from the Spanish Government Grant ECO2016-76866-R and the Catalan Government Grant 2017 SGR644 [2017 SGR644]; Mildred Warner acknowledges research support from the US Department of Agriculture, National Institute of Food and Agriculture, grant # 2017-67023-26226 [017-67023-26226].