Introducing the Research Setting: Four Countries and Two Local Services

This chapter outlines the book’s overall research setting represented by the UK and the three Scandinavian countries and local park and road services, provides a comparative analysis of relatively stable characteristics of the country and service context(s) and discusses the likely importance for the evolution and diffusion of marketization. The comparison highlights the suitability of local park and road services for marketization, the characteristics of national reform trajectories, autonomy, size and territorial structure of local governments, and the supranational regulations’ context represented by the European Union. In comparison, the UK represents a context characterized by substantial larger but less autonomous local governments, early and substantial influx of neoliberal thoughts and status as reform leader. The Scandinavian countries are furthermore characterized by substantial differences in their economic situation and local government size and structure which can be expected to provide very different contexts for marketization.