Rethinking Public Law under the Regulatory Welfare State: From Privatization to Hybridity

The article offers to rethink the public law response to public governance reforms and the emergence of hybrid administrative systems, which mix public, market, and social forms of governance and accountability. After delineating the hesitant and fragmented response of courts and public lawyers to the reforms in public governance, the article presents a case for shifting the focus of public law theory from privatisation to hybridity. Then, it outlines a framework of theoretically driven principles for when, how, and to what extent to apply public law in hybrid settings. This framework is informed and illustrated by the literature on welfare governance reforms, which provides a greater wealth of material in this field.