What is it about?
The traditional concept of the state, as represented by Max Weber’s model of bureaucracy, is characterized by hierarchical and rule-based decision making and by public service delivery through government agencies. However, hierarchical authority is no longer the dominant element of the state, as participatory structures and processes in public administration have emerged. Coproduction is a core element in the institutional order of the participatory state.
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Why is it important?
This book chapter provides a conceptual framework for understanding how co-production contributes to improving public services and increasing the outcomes achieved by service users and other citizens. It then demonstrates the current level of co-production in five EU countries and discusses the lessons on how co-production could be used more systematically by the public sector in those countries.
Perspectives
This research throws up a major challenge to the public sector – citizens report a level of engagement in activities relevant to improving the outcomes of public services which is considerably in excess of that expected by local public officials and other stakeholders. This suggests that public sector officials have only a very limited understanding of the co-production activities which are going on in their field and in their area. This further suggests that user and community co-production of public services is not properly understood, never mind systematically managed, so that its potential benefits are not currently being maximized. Further research will explore on why this is and what might be done to bring the perceptions of public sector officials better into line with reality.
Professor Tony Bovaird
University of Birmingham
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: User and Community Coproduction of Public Services: What Influences Citizens to Coproduce?, January 2014, Nature,
DOI: 10.1057/9781137437495_8.
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