IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/flgsxx/v46y2020i1p1-21.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Local governments and their arm’s length bodies

Author

Listed:
  • Marieke Van Genugten
  • Sandra Van Thiel
  • Bart Voorn

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss the state of the art on the creation of arm’s length bodies (ALBs) by local governments. We make three main contributions. First, there are many different types of ALBs and each country has its own categories; an expert survey was held identifying three common types of body, to enable future comparative research. Second, we point out that the creation of ALBs has led to a number of new challenges for local governments, particularly regarding governing bodies at arm’s length to ensure ALBs’ good performance. A lack of capacity and information have to be countered, for example, by increased monitoring – also for democratic accountability purposes. Special attention is needed for the multiple principal problem that arises when local governments jointly create ALBs. Third, research into local ALBs is still in its early stages. We present a research agenda to develop knowledge on the topic.

Suggested Citation

  • Marieke Van Genugten & Sandra Van Thiel & Bart Voorn, 2020. "Local governments and their arm’s length bodies," Local Government Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(1), pages 1-21, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:flgsxx:v:46:y:2020:i:1:p:1-21
    DOI: 10.1080/03003930.2019.1667774
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03003930.2019.1667774
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/03003930.2019.1667774?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. Tamara Guerrero-Gómez & Andrés Navarro-Galera & David Ortiz-Rodríguez, 2021. "Promoting Online Transparency to Help Achieve the Sustainable Development Goals: An Empirical Study of Local Governments in Latin America," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(4), pages 1-18, February.
    2. Ligorio, Lorenzo & Caputo, Fabio & Venturelli, Andrea, 2022. "Sustainability disclosure and reporting by municipally owned water utilities," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).

    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:46:y:2020:i:1:p:1-21. 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.