Public and Social Services in Europe

This book presents comparative analyses and accounts of the institutional changes that have occurred to the local level delivery of public utilities and personal social services in countries across Europe. Guided by a common conceptual frame and written by leading country experts, the book pursues a “developmental” approach to consider how the public/municipal sector-centred institutionalization of service delivery (climaxing in the 1970s) developed through its New Public Management-inspired and European Union market liberalization-driven restructuring of the 1980s and early 1990s. The book also discusses the most recent phase since the late 1990s, which has been marked by further marketization and privatization of service delivery on the one hand, and some return to public sector provision (“remunicipalization”) on the other. By comprising some 20 European countries, including Central East European “transformation” countries as well as the “sovereign debt”-stricken countries of Southern Europe, the chapters of this volume cover a much broader cross section of countries than other recent publications on the same subject.  

Hellmut Wollmann is Emeritus Professor of Public Policy and Public Administration at Humboldt University Berlin, Germany. His recent publications include Evaluation in Public  Sector Reform (2003), Provision of Public Services in Europe (edited with G. Marcou, 2010), and Introduction into Comparative Public Administration (with S. Kuhlmann, 2014).Ivan Koprić is Professor of Administrative Science and Local Governance at the Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb, Croatia, and President of the Institute of Public Administration in Zagreb.Gérard Marcou is Professor of Public Law at the University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Institut de Recherche Juridique de la Sorbonne, France, and Director of GRALE (Groupement de Recherche sur l'Administration Locale en Europe).