As subsystem of the global social system, public administration has got powerful political, social, economic, cultural determinations, being in a complex connection with its environment. Defining the principles of functioning for society, distributive emphasizing the competences for spheres of governance, the relations of operation and representation of the government at various administrative levels, provide to the public administration the attribute of reforming the public sector. Preoccupied by their performance, the national governments, on the background of applying the principles of effectiveness and efficiency, subsidiarity, local autonomy and decentralization, are resizing the intergovernmental relations with the local level. In the context of public service development, the application of the other principles, such as accountability, participation, devolution etc. leads to changes of the borders of the public sector towards the local levels, private and non-profit sectors, groups of local communities or customers. We witness experiments and good practices of decentralization from the central to the local level, or shifting the authority to local governance levels. The paper aims to emphasize the utility of an instrument of local governance, namely the public-private partnership. Based on the theoretical approaches resulted from the specialized literature and experiences of some countries from the European Union, we shall elaborate a study on the public - private partnership in delivering a local public service at the level of a municipality in Romania
