The proposed project aims to explore when and why local administrative leaders consider co-production to be an important governance approach and the conditions needed for co-produced services to be successful. Co-production refers to arrangements in which a municipality’s representatives (including public service providers) and local citizens are actively involved in the design and delivery of local services to develop innovative solutions to societal problems. Co-production and similar approaches are key elements in many recent public management concepts (e.g., design thinking, collaborative governance, and agility).

While research on co-creation and co-production has grown exponentially, especially in countries with an Anglo-American or Scandinavian administrative tradition, there is little systematic knowledge regarding the practical importance of co-production and the conditions under which co-production processes succeed in delivering better services, in particular in countries with a Germanic administrative tradition. In such legalistic contexts, citizens may lose trust in the state and co-production might be a suitable way to bring the public sector closer to its citizens. Therefore, the project’s empirical focus will be on co-production in the social and environmental services of municipalities in countries with a Germanic administrative tradition (German-speaking Switzerland, southern Germany, and Austria) and an Anglo-American (or Westminster-type) administrative tradition (the Midlands in the United Kingdom).

The project addresses this gap in three phases.

Phase 1 will explore the perceived importance of co-production from the viewpoint of the municipality by means of an online survey of municipal service leaders in the focus regions. Regression analysis will allow us to test different hypotheses regarding the explanation of perceived importance across municipalities and countries.

Phase 2 will focus on the effectiveness of co-design and co-delivery by identifying the determinants of process success and outcome success in 24 such arrangements. Using Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), we will investigate whether different factors and configurations lead to successful (or failed) co-design and co-delivery in terms of both process and outcomes.

In Phase 3, we will conduct six in-depth studies of “typical” and “deviant” cases that will be selected from the previous sample based on the QCA results. While a typical case is a case whose empirical configuration resembles most closely the relevant causal path as identified in the QCA, a deviant case is a case which does not show the expected outcome despite a favorable configuration of conditions. These cases will be used to develop a realistic impact model which will allow us to link context, mechanisms, and outcomes of co-production.

The project will contribute to the research and practice of co-production in local governance in three ways. First, it will provide new insights into the systematic use and practice of co-design and co-delivery in the local governance and will identify similarities and differences across administrative traditions. Second, it will offer a realistic picture of co-production performance in different dimensions and phases whilst identifying drivers of, and barriers to, the successful application of co-design and co-delivery. Third, the project is designed in a participatory manner to enable knowledge exchange with the partner municipalities.

The results will help public sector professionals and local policy-makers to make use of co-design and co-delivery mechanisms, where appropriate, and to improve the outcomes of co-production arrangements.