Franziska Paul attended the IGU Commission on Geography of Governance Annual Conference 2022: "Local Governance in a Time of Global Emergencies" in Mexico City, Mexico, from 29 August - 1 September 2022.

Franziska presented a paper with the title "Exploring the contested dynamics of remunicipalisation: The case of the Ilm-Kreis, Thuringia, Germany", drawing on some of our project research findings from the trip to Thuringia in early 2020. 

Full abstract below:

Evident since the early 2000s, the global trend towards remunicipalisation has (re)shaped the role of local governments and the delivery of local public services across the world. Remunicipalisation refers to a process whereby towns, cities, and sub-national regions take previously privatised services and infrastructures back into public ownership. This has led to the emergence of regionally- and municipally-owned state enterprises across a wide range of sectors. Like the neoliberal policies of privatisation and liberalisation that remunicipalisation is reacting to, the phenomenon is spatially diverse and variegated (Paul and Cumbers, 2021). Engaging with theories on the typologies of remunicipalisation (McDonald, 2018), this paper explores the multifaceted motivations behind remunicipalisation, including the democratisation of local governments and public services, state entrepreneurialism and new public management, as well as procedures imposed by supranational legislation (e.g. EU directives), in order to show that motivations for remunicipalisations are complex and far from neatly contained. While global in scope, the phenomenon of remunicipalisation is particularly pronounced in Germany. Utilising insights from ongoing empirical work on German remunicipalisation, the paper argues that the variegated and complex motivations underlying remunicipalisation result in new opportunities as well as challenges for local governments.

First published: 6 April 2022

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