Original scientific paper
Provision of Public Services in European Countries: From Public/Municipal to Private and Reverse?
Hellmut Wollmann
; Humbold University Berlin, Germany
Abstract
The paper aims at discussing the institutional development that the provision of social and public services has undergone since its early beginnings in the 19th century. At that time, certain social services and public utilities were provided by municipalities and municipally owned enterprises. This can be labelled as local welfare state. The national welfare state was the most developed in the 1960s. Since the 1980s, these services have been under the impact of neo-liberal policy, the New Public Management concepts, and the European Union market liberalization policy. European Union law has developed its own legal definition of public services and labelled them as services of general economic interest. The development in five countries is analysed: United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, and Norway. Cross-country institutional commonalities and variance, as well as the factors that have impinged upon such country-specific trajectories are
identified. The article, theoretically based on neo-institutional theory, focuses on energy provision. The main conclusion is that public utilities sectors in analysed countries show significant signs of re-municipalisation, i.e. strengthening the role of local authorities and their municipal enterprises in providing services of general
economic interest. This is perceived to be a result of the political strengthening of local government within the intergovernmental setting of the national states and of the EU.
Keywords
public services; services of general interest (EU); institutional development; energy provision; local authorities; municipal enterprises
Hrčak ID:
131846
URI
Publication date:
1.12.2011.
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