Reasons for Inter-municipal Cooperation: A Comparative Analysis of Finland, Iceland and Norway

Eyþórsson, Grétar Þór; Kettunen, Pekka; Klausen, Jan Erling; Sandberg, Siv

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-62819-6_6

Cited by 8 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…Experience with metropolitan cooperation in England confirms that this ‘tend[s] to be on peripheral and relatively noncontroversial matters, and not on matters of significance’ (Norris , p. 540). International evidence also supports this proposition (Hefetz and Warner ; although see Eythórsson et al ).…”

Section: Considerations In Shared Service Designmentioning

confidence: 78%

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Efficiency and legitimacy in collaborative public management: Mapping inter‐local agreements in England using social network analysis

Dixon

Elston

2020

Public Administration

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English councils have long aspired to be ‘self‐sufficient’, providing services within single jurisdictions with limited inter‐local collaboration. However, by 2017 almost all local councils (97 per cent) participated in one or more frontline or back‐office ‘shared service’ involving 338 distinct partnerships. We analyse this new‐found enthusiasm for inter‐council collaboration by performing exploratory social network analysis on organizational and financial data for all 353 English councils. We examine factors predicting collaboration and the characteristics of the service networks that result, focusing on resource, organizational and political considerations. Propensity to collaborate was found to be unpredictable, but partner choice was rational, driven by geographical proximity and similarity in organizational and resource characteristics. We argue that, according to the institutional theory of organizations, both efficiency and legitimacy influenced these reform choices, and the risks of fashionable collaboration were mitigated by careful partner selection. We highlight implications for future quantitative research into symbolic (non‐instrumental) forms of collaboration.

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Section: Considerations In Shared Service Designmentioning

confidence: 78%

“…Research in the USA tends to find inter‐local cooperation to be negatively related to council population size (Carr et al ; Shrestha and Feiock ). In Europe, some studies concur (Bel et al ; Eythórsson et al ) while others disagree (Puey et al ).…”

Section: Considerations In Shared Service Designmentioning

confidence: 93%

Efficiency and legitimacy in collaborative public management: Mapping inter‐local agreements in England using social network analysis

Dixon

Elston

2020

Public Administration

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“…In this instance, the focus is on voluntary cooperation. An important feature here is the question of choice and the idea that IMCs provide the local authorities with the possibility to actively evaluate the costs and benefits of different service delivery choices (Eythórsson et al 2018). In an addition to the models described above, Morse and Abernathy (2015) point out that there are numerous ways to organise the cooperation between local authorities.…”

Section: Stjórnmál and Stjórnsýslamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is a robust body of research available on various types of local reforms in the international setting (Askim, Klausen, Vabo, & Bjurstrom 2016;Bel & Gradus 2018;Feiock 2007;Hulst & Montfort 2007;Tavares 2017;Teles 2016). In the Icelandic context, there is substantial research available on the issue of consolidation (Eythórsson 2014), while less is known about inter-municipal cooperation (IMC) (Eythórsson 2018;Eythórsson, Kettunen, Klausen, & Sandberg 2018). However, there is limited information on the issue of local administration (Kristinsson 2001(Kristinsson , 2014 and the level of service provision or the level of personnel (Hlynsdóttir 2016;Kristinsson 1994) at the Icelandic municipal level.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Local administrative capacity based on the presence of expert staff in municipal city halls and inter-municipal cooperation entities

Hlynsdóttir¹

2019

irpa

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Local government in Iceland has been through extensive functional reforms in the past three decades. Territorial reforms have been less successful even though the central government has openly aimed to enhance the capacity of the local governments. This study aims to estimate the administrative capacity of Icelandic local governments by estimating the level of expertise in the tasks of planning, education and social service. The findings show that there is a considerable difference with respect to size, as municipalities with more than 3,000 citizens have much higher levels of expertise in comparison to smaller municipalities. The municipalities are only partially able to turn to inter-municipal cooperation (IMC) for compensation because the municipalities in more densely populated areas are more likely to set up IMC entities than those in more sparsely populated areas. The municipalities in less populated areas are also more likely to buy their services from private service providers. Moreover, the smallest municipalities have transferred a large bulk of their functions to other municipalities through contracting. The findings suggest that IMCs may not be the best answer for small municipalities, especially those in rural and remote areas.

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“…The average size of the population comprises 47,456 thousand inhabitants in 2017 in a single municipality. 8 The internal variation of municipality size is significant, for example, 7 percent of urban municipalities have more than 280,000 thousand inhabitants compared to 75 percent of municipalities with less than 29,000 thousand inhabitants. The smallest municipality has a population of only 3,500 thousand inhabitants.…”

Section: Diversity and Limited Capacitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Uncoupling Inter-Municipal Cooperation Capacity: Lithuanian Municipalities’ Efforts To Sustain Services Provision

Bučaitė-Vilkė

Civinskas

Lazauskienė

2018

Baltic Journal of Law &Amp; Politics

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Despite the absence of the long-term tradition of inter-municipal cooperation in Lithuania, the country represents a compelling case of cooperative solutions which are mostly focused on public services delivery design imposed by the central government. The article provides theoretical and empirical insights on the inter-municipal cooperative capacities and their scope in the case of Lithuania, with reference to the size of the municipality. The results reveal that the large size municipalities are more likely to benefit from collaborative arrangements in comparison to small size municipalities which have less institutional ability for collaboration. In this respect, the external influences imposed by the central authorities’ agenda on implementing economy of scale principles and strong municipal service delivery regulations is extremely important for understanding the municipal efforts for collaboration.

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Reasons for Inter-municipal Cooperation: A Comparative Analysis of Finland, Iceland and Norway

Cited by 8 publications

References 16 publications

Efficiency and legitimacy in collaborative public management: Mapping inter‐local agreements in England using social network analysis

Efficiency and legitimacy in collaborative public management: Mapping inter‐local agreements in England using social network analysis

Local administrative capacity based on the presence of expert staff in municipal city halls and inter-municipal cooperation entities

Uncoupling Inter-Municipal Cooperation Capacity: Lithuanian Municipalities’ Efforts To Sustain Services Provision

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