Motives, effects, and steering of shared civil service organisations at the local level in the Netherlands

Local governments increasingly engage in collaborative efforts. As a consequence of decreasing public budgets, cutbacks and decentralisation from the national to the local level, in the Netherlands and in other Western... [ view full abstract ]

Local governments increasingly engage in collaborative efforts. As a consequence of decreasing public budgets, cutbacks and decentralisation from the national to the local level, in the Netherlands and in other Western countries, municipalities organise more and more public services in inter-municipal corporations for efficiency gains (Dollery & Grant, 2011; Hulst et al., 2009; Wollmann, 2004). Inter-municipal corporations are organisations of which several municipalities have significant control, through full or partial ownership. They formally depend on local governments for their establishment, decision-making and continued existence (Hulst et al., 2009).

Since 2007, a new form of inter-municipal cooperation has entered the arena in the Netherlands: the shared civil service organisation. This form of inter-municipal cooperation entails a merger of the civil services of all participating municipalities into one shared service organisation (Herweijer & Fraanje, 2011). This shared civil service organisation is charged with the provision of all local tasks to the participating municipalities. On January 2016, of the 393 Dutch municipalities 36 municipalities participate in 16 shared service organisations of this kind.

Since the first shared civil service organisation exists almost ten years now, a growing number of municipalities is deciding on whether to establish such a shared civil service organisation, and the expectations regarding their performance are high, it is time to evaluate this type of inter-municipal cooperation. From an academic perspective this evaluation is relevant too, because up till recently, little systematic research has been directed to effects of inter-municipal arrangements and shared service centres (Dollery & Akimov, 2008; Janssen, Kamal, Weerakkoddy & Joha, 2012) and impacts of governance innovation in general (De Vries et al., 2015). Furthermore, as with other forms of inter-municipal corporations, local governments face many challenges steering shared civil service organisations (Grossi & Reichard, 2008; Van Thiel & Snijders, 2010).

Therefore, in this paper we analyse existing evaluation studies of shared civil service organisations in the period 2010-2016. To examine the steering relationship principal agent and principal steward theory are used (Jensen & Meckling, 1976; Davis et al., 1997) and the multiple principal problem (Dixit, 2002; Waterman & Meier, 1998).