The prevailing belief is that local governments, which are closer to their citizens, can deliver
public goods much more efficiently than a central government can. Yet skeptics argue that …

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 …

Territory and scale have been some of the most relevant topics in recent political science,
but do we know enough about cooperation between local governments? How we think …

Inter-municipal cooperation in public service delivery has attracted the interest of local
authorities seeking to reform public service provision. Cost saving, together with better …

Local governments can increase size in particular policy fields through cooperation with
other local governments. This is often thought to improve efficiency, but there is little …

Collaboration is a commonly prescribed method of public service improvement. If
collaboration fails, blame is typically ascribed to transaction costs, organizational inertia, or …

Since the Great Recession, some have argued that local governments have become
'austerity machines' that cut and privatize services and undermine unions. We conducted a …

Over the last few decades, European countries have dealt with problems of regional
governance in very different ways. A common theme is the debate between supporters of …

Scholarly empirical studies on factors that motivate local privatisation have greatly grown in
the last decade. As well, having available better and more comprehensive databases and …

ABSTRACT The 2007–2008 Global Financial Crisis renewed interest in New Public
Management tools. Privatization and intermunicipal cooperation are the two most common …