Unravelling the co-producers: Who are they and what motivations do they have?

All over the world new initiatives emerge in which citizens play an active role in public service delivery processes. Sometimes governments create opportunities for citizens to take up responsibilities; in other instances, citizens themselves request a more active role. But regardless of who the initiator is, for public service employees it means they collaborate with these citizens: the so-called “co-producers”. As a result, they need to share tasks, power, and responsibilities. In this chapter, we focus on the co-production of public services: the process in which citizens and public employees collaborate to, among other things, secure the quality and continuity of public services (Ewert and Evers, 2012; Brandsen, Pestoff and Verschuere, 2012; Brandsen and Honingh, 2016).