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Regulation issues in the Italian local transport system: aligning transactions and governance structures

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Abstract

This paper refers to the concept of public governance in the light of Transaction Cost Economics (TCE). While TCE is well developed and widely applied in the private sector, only a few studies have adopted such framework to investigate the provision of public services. We aim at pointing out the coherence between peculiar typologies of transactions and a given set of governance structures, within Local Public Transport systems. The core of the analysis is the alignment between characteristics of transactions and governance structures. The empirical section addresses these issues referring to three case studies, pointing out an articulated organizational configuration in terms of actors involved and governance structures adopted. The analysis shows an alignment between the choices underlying the design of the local transport system and the outcomes expected in terms of TCE.

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Notes

  1. “La gouvernance des services publics de transport urbain peut être introduite par cette grille d’analyse bien connue de la gouvernance des entreprises. Les acteurs sont bien sûr different, mais un certain nombre de problématiques sont communes. […] L’enjeu central de la structure de gouvernance (governance structure), au sens de Williamson (1985), est d’encadrer les transactions entre les contractants, ce qui est fondamentalement une conception convergente avec la définition la plus large de la gouvernance. […]. La gouvernance des services publics de transport collectif urbain est par consequent définie comme l’ensemble des mécanismes qui ont pour effet de délimiter les pouvoirs et d’influencer le comportement du ou des prestataires” (Roy 2007, p. 13).

  2. Administrative controls refer to instruments of monitoring and accountability of the regulatory subject (local government or authority/agency).

  3. We refer to the degree of autonomy of the organizational actor.

  4. Williamson (1981) differentiates between classical contract law (or dispute resolution by court), neoclassical contract law (or dispute settling by arbitration) and forbearance (or internal dispute settling). Each governance structure is supported by a different specific form of contract law.

  5. A possible classification mentions eight different types of contract (van de Velde et al. 2008): (1) public service obligation contracts with public operators (self production or in-house operators); (2) competitively tendered route contracts with central planning of the services; (3) competitively tendered authorisations for route contracts; (4) competitively tendered network management contracts; (5) Functional tendering of network contracts; (6) private concessions including infrastructure; (7) open entry regimes with additional quality partnerships; and (8) supply of non-commercial routes by competitive tendering in addition to a commercially viable deregulated market.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Economia Aziendale, Facoltà di Economia, Università di Napoli Federico II, Naples, Italy

    Paolo Canonico & Gianluigi Mangia

  2. Dipartimento di Diritto Dell’Organizzazione Pubblica, Economia e Società, Università di Catanzaro Magna Graecia, Catanzaro, Italy

    Ernesto De Nito

  3. Dipartimento di Studi Aziendali, Facoltà di Economia, Università di Napoli Parthenope, Naples, Italy

    Lorenzo Mercurio

  4. Dipartimento di Strategie Aziendali, Facoltà di Economia, Seconda Università di Napoli, Naples, Italy

    Mario Pezzillo Iacono

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  1. Paolo Canonico
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  2. Ernesto De Nito
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  3. Gianluigi Mangia
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  4. Lorenzo Mercurio
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  5. Mario Pezzillo Iacono
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Correspondence to Paolo Canonico.

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Canonico, P., De Nito, E., Mangia, G. et al. Regulation issues in the Italian local transport system: aligning transactions and governance structures. J Manag Gov 17, 939–961 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10997-011-9205-2

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