Abstract
This chapter brings together the communalities identified in the previous chapters. It underlines the fact that inter-municipal cooperation (IMC) in European countries is a highly diversified and growing phenomenon. In addition, it stresses the evolutive character of these arrangements as well as the difficulty in tracing its definition’s borders. The analysis it provides—especially regarding territorial issues, scope, motives and actors, and legitimacy of IMC—reinforces the relevance of the phenomenon and of the new research agenda we advance. Most of all, this is a call for increasing the research intensity on the topic, going beyond the comparison of institutional forms of IMC and addressing its most difficult questions: why is this phenomenon so widespread? Does it work? Is it manageable? Is it democratic?
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Notes
- 1.
After 2008, that is, during last eight years, municipal amalgamation reforms have been implemented in Albania, Greece, Ireland, Latvia, in some parts of federal countries of Austria and Switzerland, accelerated (started earlier transformations) in the Netherlands and Finland, and are currently implemented in Estonia, Norway and Ukraine. In Portugal, similar reform has been implemented on a sub-municipal (parish) level. In most of those cases, the reforms have been directly or indirectly connected to attempts of coping with negative consequences of the financial crisis.
- 2.
More information about the survey and sampling method may be found in Chap. 3 of this volume.
- 3.
- 4.
We refer, predominantly, to horizontal cooperation, but—as Grote (2003) convincingly demonstrates—elements of hierarchy may increase efficiency of network coordination.
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Swianiewicz, P., Teles, F. (2018). Inter-municipal Cooperation Diversity, Evolution and Future Research Agenda. In: Teles, F., Swianiewicz, P. (eds) Inter-Municipal Cooperation in Europe. Governance and Public Management. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62819-6_20
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