Shifting modes of service delivery in Dutch local government

Abstract

ABSTRACT Analyzing shifts in the delivery mode of 12 municipal services between 2010 and 2018, in about 41% of the observations, shifts took place, with 54% toward outside production and 46% toward inside production. In the physical domain, most shifts were to cooperation, whereas in the operational domain reverse privatization and also cooperatization are dominant trends. Based on logit models, for services with high asset specificity, we find a lower likelihood of change, whereas for services with high measurement difficulty, we find a higher likelihood of change to outside and away from in-house, and a lower likelihood of change to inside.