Factors Influencing Decisions on Services Provision in major Slovak Cities

The article deals with structural factors affecting decisions about the provision of services in large Slovak cities. In addition to introducing an economic model based on transaction cost theory, models of political decision making regarding the provision of services by cities (ideological model, public choice theory and political risk-aversion model) are described. The article concentrates upon decisions regarding the provision of seven selected services in eight major Slovak cities. In addition to collecting data on the means of providing the selected services, relevant decision makers about the perceived asset specificity and about the measurability of selected services have been interviewed. The findings partly confirm economic hypotheses about the provision of public services, which suggest that oursourcing is expected if the services to be provided are easily measurable. The findings are also consistent with models based on political decision-making, but do not allow to pinpoint any of the political models as the facts are consistent with all three of them.