SIMILAR PROBLEMS,DIFFERENT SOLUTIONS: COMPARING REFUSE COLLECTION IN THE NETHERLANDS AND SPAIN

Because of differences in institutional arrangements, public service markets, and national traditions regarding government intervention, local public service provision can vary greatly. In this paper we compare the procedures adopted by the local governments of The Netherlands and Spain in arranging for the provision of solid waste collection. We find that Spain faces a problem of consolidation, opting more frequently to implement policies of privatization and cooperation, at the expense of competition. By contrast, The Netherlands, which has larger municipalities on average, resorts somewhat less to privatization and cooperation, and more to competition. Both options—cooperation and competition—have their merits when striving to strike a balance between transaction costs and scale economies. The choices made in organizational reform seem to be related to several factors, among which the nature of the political system and the size of municipalities appear to be relevant.     

Peace in South Tyrol and the Limits of Consociationalism

This article discusses the capacity of corporate consociationalism in bringing positive peace, understood as the enhancement of societal harmony, cooperation and integration, by analyzing South Tyrol, considered a model-case to diffuse ethnic tensions. Using data on attitudes of the South Tyrolean population concerning various aspects of the relationships between South Tyrolean linguistic groups, the analysis shows that South Tyrolean consociational mechanisms have brought peaceful coexistence and mutual acceptance among the groups, but some problematic elements remain in the success story of South Tyrol. Thereby the article highlights the limits of corporate consociationalism in fostering positive peace in divided societies.     

The gender politics of executive candidate selection and reselection

This research provides new theoretical and empirical insights into the gender politics of the springboards to chief executive office. The extremely masculinised composition of the relatively few top national executive positions has posed a serious impediment to empirically assessing the conditions that may facilitate women's under-representation and men's over-representation. To overcome this constraint, this study looks at the top regional executive office across four West European countries that present a multilevel state structure – namely Austria, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom. Using two original datasets, the article examines the ways in which the selection and reselection of regional prime ministerial candidates is shaped by individual, organisational and institutional factors that produce heterogeneous experiences and career opportunities across sex. The results show that women have not shattered the glass ceiling at the regional level and pinpoint the fact that they are held to higher standards, benefit less from the political resources they possess and are more dependent on the decision environment in which parties select executive candidates. The conclusion is that the rules of the game guiding selection and reselection processes are strongly biased towards men.     

Learning,political regimes and the liberalisation of trade

In this article, the probability of opening to trade is related to a country's propensity to learn from other countries in its region. It is argued that countries have different motivations to learn, depending upon the responsiveness and accountability of their political regimes. Whereas democracies cannot afford to be dogmatic, authoritarian regimes are less motivated to learn from the experience of others, even if they embrace policies that fail. Using data on trade liberalisation for 57 developing countries in the period 1970–1999, it is found that democracies confronting economic crises are more likely to liberalise trade as a result of learning; among democracies, presidential systems seem to learn more, whereas personalist dictatorial regimes are the most resistant to learning from the experience of others.     

INTER‐MUNICIPAL COOPERATION AND COSTS: EXPECTATIONS AND EVIDENCE

Austerity and fiscal crisis make the search for cost‐saving reforms in local government more critical. While cost savings from privatization have frequently proven ephemeral, inter‐municipal cooperation has been a relatively understudied reform. We analyse the literature on cost savings under cooperation and find that savings are dependent on (1) the cost structure of public services, particularly those related to scale and density economies and externalities, (2) the structure of local government (size, metropolitan location, powers granted by the nation or regional state), and (3) the governance framework at the local/regional level where cooperation varies from informal to formal. European studies give more emphasis to cost savings, while US studies focus on coordination concerns arising from the higher degree of devolution in the US local government system.     

COMPETITION OR MONOPOLY? COMPARING PRIVATIZATION OF LOCAL PUBLIC SERVICES IN THE US AND SPAIN

Differences in national traditions of public intervention, institutional arrangements and public service markets make local public services an area of great diversity. In this paper we undertake a comparative study of how local governments arrange for delivery of water and waste services in the US and Spain. We find levels of privatization are higher in Spain than in the US. We review organizational reform in the two contexts and compare service delivery data using national surveys from each country. We find lower and less stable privatization in the US stems in part from adherence to public choice emphasis on the benefits of market competition over public monopoly. By contrast, Spanish municipalities reflect an industrial organization approach, and create hybrid public/private firms which benefit from both market engagement and economies of scale available under monopoly production. We conclude that managing monopoly may be more important than competition in local service delivery.     

Privatization and Regulatory Reform of Toll Motorways in Europe

This article analyzes current trends in toll motorway privatization in Europe as an illustration of the paradox of simultaneous deregulation/privatization and reregulation. Changes in the form of government intervention are identified as transitions from internal control on processes and inputs to external control on performance outputs. The state guarantees its capability to intervene and seek its own objectives even when giving up public property. In fact, output regulation is a partial substitute for public ownership. We analyze the hypothesis that privatization of motorways spurs price regulation. Indeed, we observe that toll regulation becomes more detailed as the private sector increases in size, which is a regular reaction across different institutional frameworks. This result is consistent with the literature on the rise of a regulatory state, which emerges with a new mode of governance based on indirect government. Moreover, the study provides evidence of the importance of temporal context in modeling public sector restructuring.