Determinants affecting privatisation of local government services in Britain

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyse the determinants of CCC (Compulsory Competitive Tendering) policy outputs at the local government level in Britain and to examine how the outputs have been made, relating the CCT implementation process to the main factors affecting its outputs. Specifically, this study is based on the assumption that policy output as a general phenomenon can not be seperated from the process of formulating and implementing the policy. I shall argue that many of the major determinants underlying the CCT process remain unexplored and must be examined in order for us to understand more fully CCT policy as a service provision policy in local government. It is hoped that, in view of the characteristics and implications of the process of privatisation,this research will prove timely. Although the phenomenon of privatisation has spawned a huge literature in 1980s and 1990s, much of it has been guided by public choice theory, which argues the superior cost-efficiency of private over public service delivery. Although policy output studies have not been entirely neglected in these studies, they have generally been a secondary consideration to economic analysis. An examination of CCT policy output which associates the output with the dynamics of the policy implementation process is particularly important. It is no my intention to analyse whether CCT is a desirable policy or not. Rather, my more limited purpose is to identify the main factors which explain local variation in the output of CCT process, and to explain the way in which the contested privatisation process is related to the its output.