 Governing with contracts: have we entered the era of the outsourced state?Graeme A. Hodge and David Van Slyke Chapter 6 in Research Handbook on Privatisation, 2025, pp 113-139 from Edward Elgar Publishing Abstract: This chapter argues that contracting is now central to governments and not a peripheral policy issue. As a consequence, all public servants need to understand its pedigree and its promises, along with its its perils and its potential. The historical context underpinning contracting is therefore firstly outlined in this chapter along with foundational contracting concepts. It then argues that we have come a long way in our experience with contracting and today it is common place. Despite the importance of contracting-out to the public sector, however, it will remain hugely challenging for governments for a range of reasons: service complexity, its political context, the need to balance multiple values, and the expectations of citizens to be both the best of the public and private worlds are some of these. Governments will need to continue strengthening their capability in order to solve contemporary public policy problems through contracting. But contracting challenges can be met if we are able to look past the colourful media crises and loud ideological critiques and advocacy of commentators. Keywords: Privatisation; Contracting; Contracting-out; Outsourcing; Public-private partnership; Complex services (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:22219_6 Ordering information: This item can be ordered from Access Statistics for this chapter More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing |
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