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 "e;developmental"e; 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 ("e;remunicipalization"e;) on the other. By comprising some 20 European countries, including Central East European "e;transformation"e; countries as well as the "e;sovereign debt"e;-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.  

Chapter 1. Comparative Study of public and social services provision: Definitional, conceptual and methodological frame; Hellmut Wollmann.- Chapter 2. The impact of EU law on local public service provision: competition and public service; Gérard Marcou.- Chapter 3. What impact of European Court of Justice decisions in the field of local public services provision?; Pierre Bauby and Mihaela Simlie.- Chapter 4. Delivering public services in the United Kingdom in a period of austerity; John McEldowney.- Chapter 5. Local government public service provision in France: diversification of management patterns and decentralization reforms; Gérard Marcou.- Chapter 6. Re-Municipalisation Revisited: Long-Term Trends in the Provision of Local Public Services in Germany; Frank Bönker, Jens Libbe and Hellmut Wollmann.- Chapter 7. Local government and the market. The case of public services and care for the elderly in Sweden; Stig Montin.- Chapter 8. Local public services in Italy: still fragmentation;Giulio Citroni, Andrea Lippi and Stefania Profeti.- Chapter 9. Spanish Municipal Services delivery: an uncertain scenario; Jaume Magre Ferran and Esther Pano Puey.- Chapter 10. From municipal socialism to the sovereign debt crisis:  Local Services in Greece 1980-2015; Theodore Tsekos and Athanasia Triantafyllopoulou.- Chapter 11. Mixed System: Transformation and Current Trends in the Provision of Local Public Services in the Czech and Slovak Republics; Juraj Nemec and Jana Soukopova.- Chapter 12. The evolution of local public services provision in Poland; Lukacs Mikula and Marzena Walaszek.- Chapter 13. From Municipalisation to Centralism: Changes in the Hungarian Local Public Service Delivery; Tamás M. Horvath.- Chapter 14. Local Government and Local Public Services in Croatia; Ivan Kopric, Vedran Dulabic and Anamarija Musa.- Chapter 15. Local service delivery in Turkey; Ulas Bayraktar and Cagla Tansug.- Chapter 16. Local governments and the energy sector: A comparison of France, Iceland and the United Kingdom; Roselyn Allemand, Magali Dreyfus, Arni Magnusson and John McEldowney.- Chapter 17. Water Provision in France, Germany and Switzerland: Between Convergence and Divergence; Eva Lieberherr, Claudine Viard and Carsten  Herzberg.- Chapter 18. Hospital privatization in Germany and France: Marketization without deregulation?; Tanja Klenk and Renate Reiter.- Chapter 19. Models of local public service delivery: Privatisation, publicisation and the renaissance of the cooperative?; Hartmut Bauer, and Friedrich Markmann.- Chapter 20. Institutional variants of local utility services: Evidence from several European countries; Giuseppe Grossi and Christoph Reichard.- Chapter 21. Public and social services in Europe: From public/municipal to private provision - and reverse?; Hellmut Wollmann.