Citizens and Public Service Performance: Demands, Responses and Changing Service Delivery Mechanisms

The workshop analyses the interaction between citizens, users and public services that entail public funding, ownership or regulation in the context of contemporary service delivery mechanisms. These mechanisms include quasi-market and choice based mechanisms, non-state actors providing services and structures for coproduced services that operate alongside, or as an alternative to, more state-centric, bureaucratic or professionalised modes of delivery. The workshop organisers welcome papers on these topics that evaluate the empirical implications of theory using evidence. The workshop will discuss a set of core themes: How do structures for choice, exit, coproduction, consultation and broader voice affect citizens and users’ interaction with public services? How does transparency, including published information about the performance of services, and communications technology affect citizens and users’ interaction with services? Are interactions now consumer rather than citizen oriented? Do market and related methods interact with, and even crowd-out, citizens’ political voice activities? What are the effect of service delivery structures on citizen cooperation with services and coproduction of services? What are the effects of citizen and user feedback on political and managerial service providers, service performance and the continued use of particular mechanisms? Are different groups of citizens and users differently able to use delivery mechanisms to advance their interests? What is the current state of policy-makers’ knowledge about these issues and how can social science inform the future institutional design of mechanisms for citizens and users’ interaction with public services?