From Political to Politicized Metagovernance: Explaining the Captured Coproduction of Elderly Care in Croatia

The paper analyses the development of patronage practices which emerged as a side effect of a reformist initiative supposed to mobilise citizens and local communities in the production of elderly care services in Croatia.... [ view full abstract ]

The paper analyses the development of patronage practices which emerged as a side effect of a reformist initiative supposed to mobilise citizens and local communities in the production of elderly care services in Croatia. While employing the process-tracing method, the paper uses the notion of political metagovernance as a conceptual starting point and examines causal mechanism that can, in a clientelistic policy-making context, account for the distortive impact of partisan patronage on the reform inspired by New Public Governance thinking. By using evidence gathered from interviews with policy actors, official documents and statistical data, it reveals how in the case of elderly care reform in Croatia, patronage-driven elected officials led the reform by merging activities corresponding with the notion of political metagovernance with those activities through which they were enabling politicized distribution of public funding and employment of party supporters as service providers. By drawing on the findings, the paper offers conceptualization of politicized metagovernance mechanism.