Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Edited by
Marieke Van Genugten · Bart Voorn
Rhys Andrews · Ulf Papenfuß · Harald Torsteinsen
Corporatisation in Local Government
Marieke Van Genugten
Bart Voorn • Rhys Andrews
Ulf Papenfuß • Harald Torsteinsen
Editors
Corporatisation in
Local Government
Context, Evidence and Perspectives from
19 Countries
Editors
Marieke Van Genugten Bart Voorn
Institute for Management Research Institute for Management Research
Radboud University Radboud University
Nijmegen, The Netherlands Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Harald Torsteinsen
Department of Social Sciences
UiT The Arctic University of Norway
Tromsø/Harstad, Norway
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
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Contents
1 Corporatisation
in Local Government: An Introduction 1
Harald Torsteinsen, Rhys Andrews, Ulf Papenfuß,
Marieke Van Genugten, and Bart Voorn
2 Municipally
Owned Corporations in Canada 21
Joseph Lyons, Zachary Spicer, and David Taylor
3 Municipally
Owned Corporations in England and Wales:
A Tale of Two Countries 49
Rhys Andrews and Laurence Ferry
4 Municipally
Owned Corporations in Israel: Local
Initiative and the Pursuit of Flexibility in a Centralised
Context 73
Eran Razin and Anna Hazan
5 Municipally
Owned Corporations in Hungary 99
György Hajnal and Bence Kucsera
v
vi Contents
6 Municipally
Owned Corporations in Poland: Delivery of
Local Public Services119
Julita Łukomska, Paweł Swianiewicz, Katarzyna Szmigiel-
Rawska, Marta Lackowska, and Joanna Krukowska
7 Private
Law, Public Control: Municipally Owned
Corporations in Slovakia143
Emília Sičáková-Beblavá and Matúš Sloboda
8 Municipally
Owned Corporations in Austria: High
Popularity, Low Transparency171
Sanja Korać and Iris Saliterer
9 Corporatised
Public Service Provision of Local
Governments in Germany: A Key Topic for UN-SDGs
and Promising Public Corporate Governance
Developments197
Ulf Papenfuß
10 Corporatisation
in Swiss Local Government221
Claire Kaiser, Reto Steiner, and Jana Machljankin
11 Municipally
Owned Corporations in France: An
Emerging Tool of Public Engineering245
Gwenaël Leblong-Masclet
12 Municipally
Owned Corporations in Greece: Historical
Evolution and the Current Situation265
Athanasia Triantafyllopoulou and Theodore N. Tsekos
13 Municipal
Corporatisation in Italy291
Giuseppe Grossi and Simone Cocciasecca
Contents vii
14 Municipal
Corporatisation in Portugal: From Mania to
Depression315
António F. Tavares and Pedro J. Camões
15 Corporatisation
in Spanish Local Government:
Governing the Diversity335
Germà Bel, Marc Esteve, Juan Carlos Garrido-Rodríguez,
and José Luis Zafra-Gómez
16 Corporatisation
in Local Government: The Case of Turkey357
Evrim Tan and Irmak Özer
17 Municipally
Owned Corporations in Denmark: Historical
Continuity and Contemporary Complexities in a Local
State-Centred Reform Trajectory385
Andrej Christian Lindholst
18 Municipal
Corporatisation in the Netherlands: A Vehicle
for Inter-municipal Cooperation409
Bart Voorn and Marieke Van Genugten
19 Corporatisation
in Norwegian Local Government429
Jan Erling Klausen and Harald Torsteinsen
20 Municipally
Owned Corporations in Sweden455
Anna Thomasson
Part VI Conclusion 473
21 Corporatised
Local Public Service Provision:
Comparative Evidence from 19 Countries and
Research Agenda475
Bart Voorn, Rhys Andrews, Ulf Papenfuß,
Harald Torsteinsen, and Marieke Van Genugten
List of Contributors
ix
x List of Contributors
xvii
xviii List of Figures
Fig. 16.4 MOCs according to sectoral areas (Affiliated entities are not
included)368
Fig. 19.1 Number and legal form of MOCs, 1997–2021 434
Fig. 19.2 Relations of authority, appointments and accountability 445
Fig. 20.1 The number of MOCs, 1973–2018 458
List of Tables
xix
xx List of Tables
H. Torsteinsen (*)
Department of Social Sciences, UiT The Arctic University of Norway,
Tromsø/Harstad, Norway
e-mail: harald.torsteinsen@uit.no
R. Andrews
Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK
e-mail: andrewsr4@cardiff.ac.uk
U. Papenfuβ
Zeppelin University, Friedrichshafen, Germany
e-mail: ulf.papenfuss@zu.de
entities with tight budgets. According to the CEO, the property MOC
tended to “gold-plate” its maintenance and investments, that is, spending
more money than what she deemed necessary. At the same time, as the
MOC was able to accumulate funds, the municipality was hit by economic
austerity and had to cut several budget items, for example, to pay the
increased property rents for its service entities. When asked if it would be
better to transform the MOC into a limited liability company, she
responded: “That would be much, much worse!” The problem is, she
explained, “I do not have control over the municipal properties on which
I depend to provide municipal services”. She added: “This company and
our other MOCs tend to become too narrow-minded, too commercial.
They stop seeing themselves as complementary parts of the larger munici-
pal organisation”. During the interview she became more and more upset,
using rather explicit and harsh language about some of the MOCs, includ-
ing their managers and boards. In the second interview, we met a newly
appointed CEO. Still, she shared many of the evaluations of her older
colleague, but at the same time she underlined some benefits of corporati-
sation. She wondered: “Is it ok to allow a MOC to live its own life and
make its own priorities at the expense of all other services?”. She further
reflected about “what would happen if the municipality corporatised all
attractive, profit-oriented services and was only left with the burdensome,
budget-dependent services for which the demand seems insatiable?”. Her
own answer was that “the municipality then loses opportunities, a tool to
provide revenues for financing our service provision. This is perhaps the
greatest risk”. On the other hand, however, both she and the senior CEO
acknowledge that corporatisation may improve the quality of the local
public services. MOCs tend to become more professional and task-
oriented, their performance is often easier to observe and measure, and
mandatory annual reporting may enhance their transparency. Although
ideographic, these examples highlight some typical ambiguities and ten-
sions that may arise between owner municipalities and MOCs.
Nonetheless, in summing up, it seems obvious that corporatisation
raises several dilemmas which make the balancing of benefits and costs a
difficult task. The calculation also affects principles of democracy, rule of
law, justice, and common good that carry more weight than individual
consumer-oriented interests, petty technicalities or minor economic gains
(Moore 2014). Finally, national political culture and context will most
certainly influence the weights and values ascribed to specific benefits and
costs, and in the end, Lasswell’s classical question, “Who gets What,
When, How”, is still relevant (Lasswell 1936).
1 CORPORATISATION IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT: AN INTRODUCTION 5
1.3 MOCs: A Definition
To make cross-country comparison possible, we established one broad defi-
nition of MOCs. In this book we define MOCs as corporations and enter-
prises that are under the control of a municipality either by majority ownership
by one or more municipalities or otherwise by exercising an equivalent
degree of control (Andrews et al. 2020; Grossi et al. 2015; Papenfuß and
Keppeler 2020; Voorn et al. 2017). More specifically, MOCs are organisa-
tions that are (Voorn et al. 2017, based on Tavares and Camoes 2007):
The term “MOC” covers all other typical terms used for arm’s length
bodies at the local level such as state-owned enterprises, corporations,
government-owned companies, public enterprises, local corporations,
6 H. TORSTEINSEN ET AL.
Source: Based on Papenfuß and Keppeler (2020); Torsteinsen and Van Genugten (2016); Van Genugten
et al. (2020)
1.7 Our Approach
within their country. Again, previous studies indicated that these back-
ground characteristics could have important implications for the manage-
ment and performance of MOCs. Fourth, contributors were asked to
discuss the relative autonomy of MOCs—freedom for professional manag-
ers to manage being a rationale that is often advanced in favour of corpo-
ratised public services (Bourdeaux 2008; Papenfuß and Schmidt 2021).
Each chapter therefore includes commentary on the extent to which
MOCs in each country can set their own goals and make their own finan-
cial and employment decisions, along with reflections on the accountabil-
ity regimes and corporate governance regulations that may be present.
Fifth, to explore corporate governance issues and prevailing debates
(Papenfuß 2020; Papenfuß and Schmidt 2021) in more depth, we
requested that contributors explain the type of board systems for MOCs,
and to discuss the typical composition of those boards. Contributors were
then given the further option of exploring the background and compensa-
tion of MOC executive directors in more depth.
Western Weberian Post- Unitary centralised Unitary Federal Rule of law Public law
bureaucracy communist decentralised Legalism Common
law
Napoleonic X X X
Belgium, France, Comprehensive codification and Central state and bureaucracy very strong and South European countries:
Greece, Italy, strong centralisation accepted, functionally weak local politicisation, clientelism and
Portugal, Spain, governments party patronage trends
Turkey particularly visible
Central European X X X
Federal
Austria, Germany, Central government weaker and leaner, local Strong legalistic and
Switzerland government and subsidiarity of higher “Rechtsstaat” culture
importance than in CEN. Influential mayors
Nordic X X X
Denmark, Finland, Open civil service recruitment, Politically and functionally strong local Consensual, cooperative,
Iceland, the transparency, clearly influenced by government, highly decentralised and pragmatic and open political
Netherlands, managerialism and to some autonomous culture
Norway, Sweden degree marketisation
Anglo-Saxon X X Xa X
Canada, Cyprus, Open civil service recruitment, Local government functionally strong, Market-oriented, public
England, Ireland, transparency. Strongly influenced politically weak. interest culture, liberal state
Israel, Scotland, by managerialism and philosophy
1 CORPORATISATION IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT: AN INTRODUCTION
Wales marketisation
Central East X X X
European
13
(continued)
Table 1.2 (continued)
14
Type Dimensions
Western Weberian Post- Unitary centralised Unitary Federal Rule of law Public law
bureaucracy communist decentralised Legalism Common
law
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18 H. TORSTEINSEN ET AL.
1
Some provincial governments have more than one Act respecting different aspects of
municipal activities, such as a general Municipal Act as well as others governing municipal
elections, municipal finance or municipal law. For more information on the Canadian munic-
ipal system, see Sancton (2021).
J. Lyons (*)
Department of Political Science, Western University, London, ON, Canada
e-mail: jlyons7@uwo.ca
Z. Spicer
School of Public Policy and Administration, York University,
Toronto, ON, Canada
e-mail: zspicer@yorku.ca
especially given the focus of this book, is that these provincial statutes refer
to municipal governments as municipal corporations. As such, for the pur-
poses of this chapter, we will use the terms municipality or municipal gov-
ernment, to refer to general-purpose local governments and municipally
owned corporations (MOCs) as a catch-all term to refer to specialised
local corporate bodies tasked with some public purpose by either a munic-
ipality or provincial government and governed by a board with some mea-
sure of legal autonomy.
With each province having its own statute or set of statutes addressing
municipal government, it should come as no surprise that there is variation
in municipal authority and autonomy throughout the country. This is true
as well when it comes to MOCs. Municipalities in Canada generally have
the ability to establish corporations. However, there are differences con-
cerning the types of corporations that can exist, whether municipalities
can create corporations autonomously, and the authority vested in specific
types of MOCs (see Taylor and Dobson 2020). Some municipalities also
make more use of MOCs than others, even when the legislative environ-
ments are similar. Although Canadian research exists on the use of special-
ised jurisdictions in keeping with this book’s definition of MOCs (see
Lucas 2016; Lyons 2021), we are lacking a coherent classification system
to capture the types and extent of local corporatisation in Canada. An aim
of this chapter is to use the typology developed by Van Genugten et al.
(2020) to make a meaningful start towards the creation of such a system.
What follows is divided into six sections. First, we take a national-level
overview of the use of MOCs in Canada by exploring local service delivery
in the largest city in each of Canada’s ten provinces. Here we make a first
attempt at adapting the typology developed by Van Genugten et al. (2020)
to classify Canadian MOCs and observe national-level trends. Second, we
explore the use of MOCs in Canada’s largest and most populous province:
Ontario. One trend observed in the national-level overview is that MOCs
are more heavily used in larger cities. Ontario is home to most of Canada’s
largest cities and focusing on a single province allows us to keep the legis-
lative environment constant. We remain with Ontario for the next section
on legal status for this same rationale. The legal status of MOCs varies by
type and by province. But given the level of detail needed to fully
D. Taylor
Municipality of Chatham-Kent, ON, Canada
2 MUNICIPALLY OWNED CORPORATIONS IN CANADA 23
Vancouver, Calgary, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal, Halifax, Moncton, Charlottetown, St.
BC AB SK MB ON QC NS NB PEI John’s,
NFLD
Municipal Lower tier Lower Single tier Single tier Single tier Lower Single Single Single tier Single
type tier tier tier tier tier
Service
Economic MOC-T3 MD + NPC/A J-M/ MD, MD + NPC/A MD + J-M/POC-T3 MD
development NPC/A POC-T3 MOC-T2 J-NPC J-NPC
+
2MOC-
T3
Electricity P MOC- MOC-T3 P MOC-T3 P P P N/G P
T3
Library MOC-T2 MOC- MOC-T2 MD MOC-T2 MD MOC- MOC- P P
T2 T2 T2
Natural gas P MOC- P P N/G N/G N/G N/G N/A N/A
T3 + NG
Parking MOC-T3 MOC- MD MOC-T2 MOC-T2 MD + MD MD MD MD
T2 MOC-T2
Police MOC-T2 MOC- MOC-T2 MOC- MOC-T2 MD MOC- P MD P
T2 T2/MD T2
Public health P P P P MOC-T2 P P P P P
Sewer MD + MD MD MD MD MD MOC- MD MD MD
RMD T3
Social/public MOC-T3 MD + P MOC-T3 MD + MD + P P P MD
housing MOC- MOC-T3 MOC-T3
T3
Tourism DMO DMO DMO J-M/ MD + NPC DMO MD MD + DMO MD
POC-T3 DMO
Transit P MD MD MD MOC-T2 MOC-T2 MD MD MD MOC-
T2
Water MD + MD MD MD MD MD MOC- MD MD MD
RMD T3
MOC-T2 Type 2 MOC, MOC-T3 Type 3 MOC, MD Municipal Department, R Regional, that is, upper-tier municipal government, J Joint, that is, partner-
ship with province and/or other municipal governments, DMO Destination Marketing Organisation, NPC Non-profit Corporation, NPC/A Non-profit
Corporation with service agreement, P Province, N/G provided by non-government entity
2 MUNICIPALLY OWNED CORPORATIONS IN CANADA
25
Table 2.2 Local service delivery in ten largest municipalities in Ontario
Toronto Ottawa Mississauga Brampton Hamilton London Markham Vaughan Kitchener Windsor
Population 2700 934 705 594 537 384 329 306 233 217
(000s)
Municipal type Single tier Single tier Lower tier Lower tier Single tier Single tier Lower tier Lower tier Lower tier Single tier
Service
Economic MD, MD + MD MD MD MD + MD + MD + MD + MD +
development MOC-T2 + NPC/A NPC/A RMD RMD RNPC/A JNPC/A
2MOC-T3
Electricity MOC-T3 MOC-T3 J-MOC-T3 J-MOC-T3 J-MOC-T3 MOC-T3 J-MOC-T3 J-MOC-T3 J-MOC-T3 MOC-T3
Library MOC-T2 MOC-T2 MOC-T2 MOC-T2 MOC-T2 MOC-T2 MOC-T2 MOC-T2 MOC-T2 MOC-T2
Natural gas N/G N/G N/G N/G N/G N/G N/G N/G MD N/G
Parking MOC-T2 MD MD MD MD MD MD MD MD MD
Police MOC-T2 MOC-T2 RMOC-T2 RMOC-T2 MOC-T2 MOC-T2 RMOC-T2 RMOC-T2 RMOC-T2 MOC-T2
Public health MOC-T2 MOC-T2 RMOC-T2 RMOC-T2 MOC-T2 JMOC-T2 RMOC-T2 RMOC-T2 RMOC-T2 JMOC-T2
Sewer MD MD RMD RMD MD MD MD + MD+RMD MD+RMD MD
RMD
Social/public MD + MD + RMD + RMD + MOC-T3 MD+RMOC RMD + RMD + RMD + MD +
housing MOC-T3 MOC-T3 RMOC-T3 RMOC-T3 and MD -T3 RMOC-T3 RMOC-T3 MOC-T3/ MOC-T3
NPC
Tourism MD and DMO DMO MD DMO DMO DMO DMO RDMO RDMO
DMO (MOC-T3) (MD) (MOC-T3)a (MOC-T3) (RMOC-T3) (JMOC-T3)
Transit MOC-T2 MOC-T2 MD MD MD MOC-T2 RMD RMD RMD MD
and MD
Water MD MD RMD RMD MD MD + MD + MD + MD + RMD MOC-T2 +
2JMOC-T2 RMD RMD MOC-T3
MOC-T2 Type 2 MOC (Local Board), MOC-T3 Type 3 MOC (Municipal Services Corporation), MD Municipal Department, R Regional, that is, upper-tier municipal govern-
ment, J Joint, i.e., partnership with province and/or other municipal governments, DMO Destination Marketing Organisation, NPC Non-profit Corporation, NPC/A Non-profit
Corporation with service agreement, P Province, N/G provided by non-government entity
a
Incorporated federally
2 MUNICIPALLY OWNED CORPORATIONS IN CANADA 27
(Statistics Canada 2017b). Regarding municipal type, there are three basic
types of municipalities in Canada: single tier, lower tier, and upper tier.
Single tier meaning that there is only one municipality with jurisdiction in
the defined territory. Lower-tier and upper-tier municipalities exist con-
currently with two or more lower-tier municipalities being constituent
municipalities of an upper-tier municipality. The division of labour between
upper-tier and lower-tier municipalities varies both within and across prov-
inces where they exist. In general, though, local services like firefighting
and neighbourhood parks are provided by lower-tier municipalities, while
regional services such as regional roads and trunk water and sewer lines are
provided by the upper-tier. In single-tier systems all these services are pro-
vided by one municipality.
Information on partisanship is not included in Table 2.1, but for com-
parative purposes it is important to note that British Columbia (BC) and
Quebec (QC) are the only two provinces in Canada where municipal
political parties are encouraged and supported through provincial legisla-
tion. In Vancouver, BC, the conservative leaning Non-Partisan Association
is the longest standing political party. Parties more to the left, such as the
Coalition of Progressive Electors and Vision Vancouver, have experienced
more competition and volatility. In Montreal, QC, political parties tend to
coalesce around specific candidates for mayor, meaning that party names
and identities are even more fluid than they are in Vancouver. Despite hav-
ing overlapping ideological orientations, local political parties in Canada
are not directly linked to provincial and federal political parties. With bet-
ter understanding of Canadian municipalities, we now turn our attention
to municipal functions and the use of MOCs as listed in Table 2.1. As this
is a novel attempt to classify municipal corporations in Canada, we started
by reviewing how municipal services are delivered by the largest city in
each Canadian province. To do this, we used existing lists of common
municipal service areas developed by Lucas and Smith (2019) and a
research team from Western University’s Centre for Urban Policy and
Local Governance (Horak and Taylor 2021). We identified 12 functional
areas in which at least one of our sample municipalities used an MOC in
keeping with the book’s definition. These functions appear as rows under
the heading ‘Service’ in Table 2.1.
As evident in Table 2.1, municipalities in Canada are primarily charged
with functions related to protecting, maintaining, and enhancing the built
environment (Sancton 2021, p. 24). Though municipalities in Canada,
and especially the larger municipalities included in this study, are
28 J. LYONS ET AL.