IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/flgsxx/v45y2019i2p175-195.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Dynamic-opportunistic behaviour in local government contracting-out decisions during the electoral cycle

Author

Listed:
  • Emilio J. de la Higuera-Molina
  • Ana M. Plata-Díaz
  • Antonio M. López-Hernández
  • José L. Zafra-Gómez

Abstract

A major question for public managers is whether municipal services should be rendered in-house or contracted out. In view of the negative perceptions often aroused by contracting out, this political decision might be framed within a theoretical model that we term ‘dynamic-opportunistic behaviour’. According to this model, the probability of municipal services being contracted out is greater in the years immediately following elections; moreover, during this period the decision is taken more quickly. In this theoretical model, not all factors (budgetary, economic, political, service characteristics and socio-economic) have an equal impact on the contracting-out decision during each year of the electoral cycle. The model was applied to a sample of 2,274 Spanish municipalities, with respect to a broad time horizon (2002–2014), and the results obtained confirm our hypotheses regarding dynamic-opportunistic behaviour in the contracting out of local public services.

Suggested Citation

  • Emilio J. de la Higuera-Molina & Ana M. Plata-Díaz & Antonio M. López-Hernández & José L. Zafra-Gómez, 2019. "Dynamic-opportunistic behaviour in local government contracting-out decisions during the electoral cycle," Local Government Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(2), pages 175-195, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:flgsxx:v:45:y:2019:i:2:p:175-195
    DOI: 10.1080/03003930.2018.1533819
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03003930.2018.1533819
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/03003930.2018.1533819?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Andrés J. Picazo-Tadeo & Francisco González-Gómez & Marta Suárez-Varela, 2020. "Electoral opportunism and water pricing with incomplete transfer of control rights," Local Government Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(6), pages 1015-1038, November.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:flgsxx:v:45:y:2019:i:2:p:175-195. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/flgs .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.