Pragmatic Municipalism: Privatization and Remunicipalisation in the US

Abstract

At the local government level in the US, the process of privatisation has been a dynamic one of experimentation with market delivery and return to public delivery when privatisation fails to deliver. National survey data show what drives this experimentation are pragmatic concerns with service cost and quality. Service and market characteristics, local government capacity and regulatory framework matter. In contrast to current international debates about the potential of remunicipalization to be a political reassertion of the public sector, for US local governments it is primarily a process of pragmatic municipalism. While some shifts in private finance and state regulatory environment favour private actors at the expense of local government, federal investments since COVID-19 provide funding and policy preference for maintaining a public role.