Arranging City Services 1

Abstract

Contemporary research on service delivery has been preoccupied with the issue of privatization. Specifically, the concern has been with whether a governmental or a nongovernmental entity is more effective and efficient in delivering publicly provided goods and services. This paper offers an alternative perspective on service delivery and examines the full array of institutional arrangements used by municipal governments to deliver different goods and services. These choices are related to characteristics of individual goods and services to derive a simple thesis. The way governments arrange for service delivery is a function of the scope and content of their service responsibilities. Different goods and services are more effectively and efficiently provided by different modes of service arrangement. The question is not whether one sector is more widely used than another, but whether governments effectively have matched their service responsibilities with the appropriate method of service arrangement.

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