Government choice between contract termination and contract expiration in re-municipalization: A case of historical recurrence?

Abstract

Since the early 2000s the terms 're-municipalization' and 'reverse privatization' entered the lexicon as several examples emerged of governments taking ownership of assets and services that had previously been privatized or outsourced. Various methods are used to implement re-municipalization decisions and differences are observed across countries and sectors. The approaches most frequently adopted are re-municipalization through contract termination and contract expiration. We utilize a wide database of re-municipalizations worldwide to analyze the factors that influence government's choice between these two approaches. The results from our multi-variate analysis find a pattern of historical recurrence in the characteristics of the current re-municipalization process.