Privatization in Four European Countries

This book has a dual focus: on how four countries use voluntary non-profit organizations to provide services to the physically, mentally, and sensorially handicapped; and on the changing role of the voluntary, or "e;third,"e; sector in welfare states. At the same time, it is also a comparative study of privatization in the special sense of using nongovernmental organizations to implement public policy. Most comparative studies of the welfare state have neglected this form of "e;indirect public administration"e; because researchers have usually conceived of government as monolithic and consequently overlook the frequent separation of financing from the delivery of public services.