This book provides a comprehensive comparison of municipally owned corporations in Europe. Each chapter outlines the legal provisions that enable or hinder the formation of municipally owned corporations in a particular country, the trends around corporatisation, and the structure of the corporations that exist.

1. Corporatisation in Local Government: An Introduction.- 2. Municipally Owned Corporations in Canada.- 3. Municipally Owned Corporations in England and Wales: A Tale of Two Countries.- 4. Municipally Owned Corporations in Israel: Local Initiative and the Pursuit of Flexibility in a Centralised Context.- 5. Municipally Owned Corporations in Hungary.- 6. Municipally Owned Corporations in Delivery of Local Public Services in Poland.- 7. Private Law, Public Control: Municipally Owned Corporations in Slovakia.- 8. Municipally Owned Corporations in Austria: High Popularity, Low Transparency.- 9. Corporatised Public Service Provision of Local Governments in Germany: A Key Topic for UN-SDGs and Promising Public Corporate Governance Developments.- 10. Corporatisation in Swiss Local Government.- 11. Municipally Owned Corporations in France: An Emerging Tool of Public Engineering.- 12. Municipally Owned Corporations in Greece: Historical Evolution and the Current Situation.- 13. Municipal Corporatisation in Italy.- 14. Municipal Corporatisation in Portugal: From Mania to Depression.- 15. Corporatisation in Spanish Local Government: Governing the Diversity.- 16. Corporatisation in Local Government: The Case of Turkey.- 17. Municipally Owned Corporations in Denmark: Historical Continuity and Contemporary Complexities in a Local State-Centred Reform Trajectory.- 18. Municipal Corporatisation in the Netherlands: A Vehicle for Inter-municipal Cooperation.- 19. Corporatisation in Norwegian Local Government.- 20. Municipally Owned Corporations in Sweden.- 21. Corporatised Local Public Service Provision: Comparative Evidence from 19 Countries and Research Agenda.

Systematic, thorough, and informative, this volume offers a very welcome contribution to the field of local government studies and, more generally, public administration. The authors show how apparently mundane organisational choices of service provision may raise fundamental questions of democratic accountability. Thus, this volume provides a solid platform for numerous future research projects about the role of corporations in public governance. — Jacob Aars, Professor, Department of Government, University of Bergen “Municipally owned corporations are the invisible entities that shape our local public services. This insightful analysis draws on rich empirical material to provide a much-needed comparative picture of corporatisation in local government across 19 countries. An essential book for students of public management.” — Steven Van de Walle, Professor, Public Governance Institute, KU LeuvenThis book provides a comprehensive comparison of municipal corporatisation in nineteen countries belonging to five different administrative traditions. Municipal corporatisation is the act of delivering public services at arm’s length from local government through municipally owned corporations. Although it has become an increasing trend in recent years, we still know little about cross-country differences in what these municipally owned corporations look like, what legislation applies to them, and how they are governed. This book seeks to fill this gap. Going beyond the national context, the book provides an overview of what unites countries in terms of municipally owned corporations, and what differentiates them. It offers a critical comparison that will make finding regional and global trends easier for researchers, and will help practitioners to better understand the differences and similarities between countries to allow for greater collaborative policy learning. Rhys Andrews is Professor of Public Management at Cardiff University, UK. Marieke van Genugten is Assistant Professor of Public Administration at Radboud University, the Netherlands. Ulf Papenfuß is Professor of Public Management and Public Policy at Zeppelin University, Germany. Harald Torsteinsen is Professor in the Department of Social Sciences at the Arctic University of Norway. Bart Voorn is Assistant Professor of Public Management at Radboud University, the Netherlands.

Outlines and explores municipally owned corporations in Europe Uses a fixed framework to better explore the comparisons between legislation Provides practitioners with a better understanding of corporatisation