We examine the relationship between a range of New Public Management (NPM) practices and citizens' perceptions of service efficiency, responsiveness, equity and effectiveness in English local governments. We find that public-private relationships have a negative relationship with citizens'...

Is there evidence for the emergence of ‘two-track’ public services, where the wealthiest, best informed and most assertive customers get the best quality service? In this paper, we use public opinion data of citizen complaint behavior from 2000 and 2004 towards services of general interest...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on public service failure and develop a research agenda for studying public service failure alongside private service failure. The general services management literature has devoted relatively little attention to public services,...

Policy responses to the global financial crisis can be divided into pro- and counter-cyclical approaches. The former advocates reducing public spending in times of financial constraints. The latter approach advocates public spending to boost the economy. Using public opinion (N=23,652) data from...

Concerns for restoring citizens' trust in government are at the core of public sector modernization. Public distrust is often blamed on the bad functioning of public services, and in political discourse well-functioning public services are said to create trust in government. This is a very...

Competing values complicate debates on the reform of public services. Attention for competition and efficiency is balanced by concerns for equity and universality in service delivery. These potential value conflicts are best visible in the reform of services of general interest. Despite debates...

Introducing choice and competition in public services was supposed to put citizens in the “driver's seat”, making them in charge of their service provision. Introducing choice often is indeed beneficial for citizens. However, it sometimes also leads to increased inequality among citizens....