Financial and political factors are widely considered to be an explanatory factor of the privatisation of public services. However, the empirical evidence in this respect is not convincing. This paper considers elements of long-term financial condition and ideological and political strength, together with other socio-economic factors and the effects of the current global financial crisis, to address the financial stress–privatisation relationship, with respect to urban water services, observed during the period 2002–2012 in Spanish municipalities. A discrete time survival model is applied, and the results obtained show that certain elements of financial condition, together with political and ideological factors, are decisive influences in decisions to privatise urban water services. We also highlight the major impact of the Great Recession and its effect on the financial stress–privatisation relationship.

The aim of this study was to conduct an analysis of the elements of public finances that favor the contracting out of social services, together with political and socioeconomic issues. The results obtained reflect the existence of significant differences in this respect according to the size of the municipal population, and show that while most indicators of a worsening financial condition, together with the neighborhood effect and a conservative political ideology, increase the likelihood of contracting out taking place, the “Austerity Machine” is not, in fact, associated with a greater probability of social care being contracted out in larger municipalities.

Transparency is considered a key element for developing a reliable government; it is the ability that all public entities have to provide access to all their information. The main objective of this work is to test the differences in the transparency of municipalities between the main indices and a new index made following the regulatory advances in this area at the national level. Called BTI, this new index aims to measure in the best possible way the degree of compliance of Spanish municipalities, through two dimensions (depth and breadth), which measure the quality and the quantity of the information. This work makes a comparison of the BTI with three of the main existing transparency indexes in Spain, to a sample of Spanish provincial capitals. The results obtained reveal clear differences between the indices, where three of the four indices analyzed show that most municipalities only fulfil the Transparency Act at the minimum level, with only a few municipalities reaching the maximum rating range. This work concludes that the BTI index is more demanding than the rest of the indexes. However, ITA stands out with a higher average score than the rest, which indicates that transparency portals are designed to obtain a good score in this index, being less objective. Finally, this paper remembers the importance of having an objective tool to measure transparency, as it can show notable differences with respect to reality.