Outsourcing by the public sector is used to address some of the weaknesses of provision by public bureaucracies but the outsourcing of public services has not been straightforward. The contracts that are drawn up can often be complicated and/or incomplete, collusion has been suspected in some markets and outsourcing can cause difficulties for political management (Lonsdale, 2005; Jenson and Stonecash, 2005; Brown et al. 2007). Such difficulties are likely to be reflected in the outsourcing strategies adopted by public organisations, for example Levin and Tadelis (2010) find that the political sensitivity of a service and the difficulty of writing a contract for a service influence local governments'' make or buy decisions. The paper will use case studies to explore how public managers perceive the political and managerial risks of outsourcing services and what strategies they adopt to mitigate those risks through the different stages of the contracting process.
