<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<p>The paper is based on the use of evidence to scrutinise the effect of the Public-Private Partnership Act on the local public utility providers, where the context of the water and wastewater sector in Slovenia serves as an example. The Act affected the legal status of public enterprises, where solely public ownership was prescribed, and therefore demanded the reorganisation of existing public enterprises. The paper aims to evaluate the reorganisation process and the trend of remunicipalisation, the motives of reorganisation (political, pragmatic or transformative) and the advantages and disadvantages of the reorganisation process. A detailed, structured online questionnaire was designed and pretested for primary data collection to reach these aims. The questionnaire was sent to the Slovenian local public utility providers in water and wastewater management. The data was collated from 2018 to 2020. It was used in the analysis to provide evidence about the outcomes of the reorganisation process. The results show that new legislation contributed to increased public ownership in local public utility provision. The results also reveal that pragmatic motivating factors contributed to increased municipal buying out of private investors from (public) enterprises. The reorganisation process led municipalities into remunicipalisation, meaning that full municipal ownership and control increased.</p>
</abstract>

The paper is based on the use of evidence to scrutinise the effect of the Public-Private Partnership Act on the local public utility providers, where the context of the water and wastewater sector in Slovenia serves as an example. The Act affected the legal status of public enterprises, where solely public ownership was prescribed, and therefore demanded the reorganisation of existing public enterprises. The paper aims to evaluate the reorganisation process and the trend of remunicipalisation, the motives of reorganisation (political, pragmatic or transformative) and the advantages and disadvantages of the reorganisation process. A detailed, structured online questionnaire was designed and pretested for primary data collection to reach these aims. The questionnaire was sent to the Slovenian local public utility providers in water and wastewater management. The data was collated from 2018 to 2020. It was used in the analysis to provide evidence about the outcomes of the reorganisation process. The results show that new legislation contributed to increased public ownership in local public utility provision. The results also reveal that pragmatic motivating factors contributed to increased municipal buying out of private investors from (public) enterprises. The reorganisation process led municipalities into remunicipalisation, meaning that full municipal ownership and control increased.

Reorganising Local Public Utilities: Where and Why We Can Argue for the Remunicipalization Trends?

NISPAcee Journal of Public Administration and Policy

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The paper is based on the use of evidence to scrutinise the effect of the Public-Private Partnership Act on the local public utility providers, where the...

Reorganising Local Public Utilities: Where and Why We Can Argue for the Remunicipalization Trends?

Published Online: Dec 16, 2023

Page range: 122 - 142

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/nispa-2023-0016

Keywords
local public utilities, public enterprise, remunicipalisation, water and wastewater management

© 2023 Veronika Petkovšek et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Reorganising Local Public Utilities: Where and Why We Can Argue for the Remunicipalization Trends?

Published Online: Dec 16, 2023

Page range: 122 - 142

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/nispa-2023-0016

Keywordslocal public utilities, public enterprise, remunicipalisation, water and wastewater management

© 2023 Veronika Petkovšek et al., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Keywords
local public utilities, public enterprise, remunicipalisation, water and wastewater management