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We investigate how the reorganization of the service-delivery 'machine' is resulting in a hybridization of NPM and post-NPM principles. We compare reform trajectories in Italy and Spain to illustrate and interpret a combination of reorganization recipes that, from both the provision and production sides, affected service delivery; and how the NPM and post-NPM principles have been followed. Our analysis of how organizational structures for public service delivery have been reformed shows that reformers are increasingly induced to adopt a shopping-basket approach, leading them to use different menus and ingredients, mixing them, to create recipes that are better suited to domestic tastes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today's technological advances have created new channels for the collaboration of local governments with citizens, who can perform the role of both partner and customer in public service delivery. This article examines an initiative in Barcelona in which citizens monitor and evaluate public services using a feedback system to register their complaints. Specifically, it analyzes how socioeconomic factors, political activism, and partisan alignment influence citizen complaints about eight urban public services in Barcelona. Using a panel of monthly district-level observations from the city's feedback system for 2014 to 2019 and fixed-effect estimations, the results show that political participation is related to a higher propensity to complain, while economic status, educational attainment, and partisan alignment do not have a significant association with complaints. These findings are then considered and discussed in relation to a survey of citizen satisfaction with urban public services in Barcelona. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interdependence is typically regarded as the cause of inter-organizational collaboration. But it is also a consequence. Collaboration itself creates new interdependence as partners become more entwined in one another's operations and experience the vetoes, compromises, delays, and risks inherent in joint working. This paradox – mitigating one set of interdependencies by creating another – renders collaborative relations inherently unstable. Dissolution may occur if "ex-post" interdependence becomes more troublesome than the original "ex-ante" trigger for the partnership. We test this proposition through comparative analysis of 13 sustained, aborted, and dissolved inter-municipal cooperations in English local government. Ex-post interdependence was most pronounced in those partnerships that ended in dissolution, and informed the design of replacement arrangements. It was also a contributory factor in the abortive cases. But ex-post interdependence was minimized in the group of sustained collaborations by management actions that streamlined the coordination burden imposed by joint working. These findings have implications for partnership design, the collaborator's skillset, and theories of collaborative public management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inter-municipal cooperation, where two or more local governments jointly provide one or more public services across their jurisdictions, is an increasingly prevalent mode of public administration. In part, this reflects the limited success of prior rounds of privatization and amalgamation reform – and the continuing desire to economize and improve regional coordination. In part, it speaks of the wider policy fashion for seeking collaborative solutions to public problems. This article introduces a special issue on "the drivers and effects of inter-municipal cooperation." It reviews the current evidence base and the contributions of six papers, and suggests productive avenues for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]