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Marketization revisited – from competition to collaboration?

Special issue call for papers from International Journal of Public Sector Management

Deadline for submission to the special issue: 15 February 2016.

Publication is scheduled in late 2016.

Early submissions and announcements to submit a paper are encouraged.

Guest editors:
Morten Balle Hansen, Aalborg University, mbh@dps.aau.dk
Christian Lindholst, Aalborg University, acl@dps.aau.dk

Since the 1980s, the public sector in many countries has witnessed fundamental changes in its organization and management. In the Public Administration literature this reform movement has been labelled New Public Management (NPM) (or Reinventing Government in the US context) and it included a variety of new ways of organizing public sector activities (Hood 1991, Osborne and Gaebler 1992). One of the strongest global reform trends of NPM has been the implementation of different types of marketization mechanisms in public service delivery (Djelic 2006, Pierre 1995), though the strength and features of this trend varies considerable between countries (Pollitt and Bouckaert 2011) and policy areas (Hansen 2010, Hansen 2011, Lindholst 2009). In the special issue, we use the concept of marketization broadly to include a number of managerial arrangements that attempts to enhance competition in public sector service delivery. It may include contracting out, public procurement, public-private partnerships, agencification, free choice for users, purchaser-provider split models and other attempts to create quasi-markets around public services.

Empirically, we call for papers examining the evolution and current state of marketization in the public sector in one or more countries. We encourage a focus at the local level of government and a focus on specific policy areas. Such areas may be technical services often considered well suited for marketization such as Park services and Road maintenance (Brown & Potoski, 2005; Hefetz & Warner, 2012) or they may be social services such as eldercare, employment policies, and public education. The analyses may be based on secondary data such as literature reviews, government white papers and/or primary data such as surveys, interviews, case studies or the like. Papers included in the special issue should include both an examination of the evolution of marketization in recent decades, an analysis of the institutional arrangements structuring marketization and an examination of the current state of marketization in the area in focus.

The objective of the special issue is to provide an empirical basis for analysing and comparing the evolution and state of the art of marketization at the level of local government in several countries. In particular our aim is to examine to what extent the classical contracting out regime well known from New Public Management (Boyne 1998, Hodge 2000) has been replaced or supplemented by other types of institutional arrangements for interaction between public and private sector organizations.

Read the full call for papers.

Best wishes

Emma

Emma Stevenson

Publishing Editor | Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Tel: +44 (0) 1274 785198 | Fax: +44 (0)1274 785200
estevenson@emeraldinsight.com | www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com

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