The perception of inter-municipal cooperation by local officials and managers

Though the exploration of inter-municipal cooperation (IMC) is very widespread in contemporary literature worldwide, the perception of IMC by municipal officials is rarely examined. We focused this paper on revealing the relationship between the perceptions of municipal public officials and the realized benefits of municipal cooperation. Our research combines primary data from a survey of municipalities engaged in a form of IMC and in-depth interviews of both municipal officials and managers who coordinate IMC. Our survey results show that agreement with the statement that IMC helps solve administrative capacity problems tends to vary with the size of the municipality. This study detected considerable obstacles to IMC use, with one set of respondents indicating that they had tried cooperation and found that it did not yield significant, positive financial or non-financial benefits for them. Our in-depth interviews revealed that strong political leadership and experienced managerial staff can contribute to the development of municipal cooperation. In summary, our research provides evidence supporting the notion that the perception of IMC by municipal officials could be an important precursor to actual IMC use and future development.