Co-Production and Public Administration Regimes

This chapter analyzes the impact of co-production and public administration regimes (PARs) on hybrid organizations. It introduces the concept of PARs: traditional public administration, New Public Management, New Public Governance (NPG) and a Communitarian regime. PARs attribute quite different weight or importance to the role of citizens and the third sector in the provision of public services, and their perspective on the role of professionals in providing services also varies considerably, as too does their view on service quality guarantees. The chapter discusses the relationship between PARs and hybridity, and also introduces the complexities of co-production, along with different levels of citizen participation in the provision of public services. Both Communitarian and NPG regimes require a high degree of citizen participation in the provision of social services, but they are found at different ends of the continuum from individual to collective service provision.