Which Local Self-Governments Seek More Collaboration? Evidence from Interlocal Collaboration for Economic Development in South Korea

Abstract

Existing studies on interlocal collaboration have focused on whether or not to form collaboration. However, we examine the extent to which local governments collaborate with each other. We measure collaboration by the number of partnering local governments in different partnerships, and test hypotheses on the potential factors affecting the degree of collaboration among local governments from a resource-based view. With a sample of 70 partnerships established for local economic development among 116 local governments in South Korea, we find that local governments with less financial resources and private sector capacity are likely to establish more collaborative partnerships. By contrast, local governments with more human resources are likely to build more partnerships with others.

Economic development collaboration in public administration research: A systematic literature review

“…Table 6 shows that regions with a large population, high household income, sufficient local government personnel, more policies to promote economic development, more poor population, low degree of financial independence, and small elderly population participate more in local economic development cooperation. Resource dependence theory is often used to explain the impact of socio-economic attributes on EDC (Hawkins & Feiock, 2011; Im et al, 2017). For instance, Hawkins (2010b) argues that local structural factors such as population, income, and the unemployment rate can cause local governments to seek and be asked for resources by other localities, reflecting the demand and pressure of economic development in a locality.…”

“…Moreover, overlap and duplication of service and infrastructure in metropolitan areas cause low efficiency, poor service delivery, and industry frustration (Hollander, 2010), which leads to calls for integrated action among economic development organizations. Interjurisdictional collaboration, then, was proposed as an interactive and dynamic solution to these fragmentation problems (V. Ostrom et al, 1961) and thus proliferated around the world (Engstrand & Sätre Åhlander, 2008;Im et al, 2017;Liddle, 2018;Liddle & Ormston, 2015;Siciliano et al, 2021;Wilson et al, 2020;Xu & Yeh, 2013). Initially, economic development collaboration studies mainly focused on collective action among public organizations such as city, county, and regional agencies, and the conceptual distinction between "collaboration" and "cooperation" was unclear (Goetz & Kayser, 1993).…”

“…Inter-jurisdictional collaboration, then, was proposed as an interactive and dynamic solution to these fragmentation problems (V. Ostrom et al, 1961) and thus proliferated around the world (Engstrand & Sätre Åhlander, 2008; Im et al, 2017; Liddle, 2018; Liddle & Ormston, 2015; Siciliano et al, 2021; Wilson et al, 2020; Xu & Yeh, 2013).…”