Inter-municipal cooperation in Europe: introduction to the symposium
| Date | 01 December 2018 |
| Author | Pawel Swianiewicz,Filipe Teles |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020852318796566 |
| Published date | 01 December 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Introduction |
Review of
Administrative
Introduction
Sciences
International Review of
Inter-municipal
Administrative Sciences
2018, Vol. 84(4) 613–618
!
cooperation in Europe:
The Author(s) 2018
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introduction to
DOI: 10.1177/0020852318796566
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the symposium
Pawel Swianiewicz
University of Warsaw, Poland
Filipe Teles
University of Aveiro, Portugal
The aim of this Symposium on Inter-municipal Cooperation in Europe is to explore
the dynamics of inter-municipal cooperation (IMC) given its increasing incidence in
contemporary local governance. The relevance and originalities of the articles rely
precisely on their approach to some of the underexplored features of these institu-
tional arrangements, as recently highlighted by Teles and Swianiewicz (2018).
To look in depth into these institutions has been claimed to be one of the main
tasks still to be fulfilled by researchers (Teles, 2016). The democratic dynamics, the
service provision role and its relevance and organizational density in most
European countries cannot rely on vague information, descriptive comparative
research and mere legal and constitutional frameworks. Knowledge on this topic
is, indeed, needed and requires more empirical studies exploring several of its
features. It also requires both inter-country and intra-country analysis of its diver-
sity. In fact, this is precisely one of the most neglected aspects of previous com-
parative research. The generalization exercises and comprehensive frameworks
have made diversity lose some of its colour.
The empirical data used in both articles in this symposium originate from a
common research protocol including identical surveys conducted in IMC institutions
in the respective countries, which implied a concentration on formal inter-municipal
Corresponding author:
Pawel Swianiewicz, Faculty of Geography and Regional Studies, University of Warsaw, Krakowskie
Przedmiescie 30, 00-927 Warszawa, Poland.
Email: pswian@uw.edu.pl
614
International Review of Administrative Sciences 84(4)
entities (being separate legal entities), and not on more loose networks or contractual
agreements between municipalities. The same survey was also conducted in a similar
period (2014–2015) in six other European countries, opening space for further com-
parative empirical research that would not only be based on a general comparison of
countries, but go down to the level of single inter-municipal entities.
Both countries covered in the articles strongly differ in the role played by IMC in
their local government systems. We may illustrate the difference by two simple
but useful indices. One simple measure is the number of permanent institutions
(i.e. excluding, e.g., ad hoc contractual agreements or loose networks of coopera-
tion) in which any municipality is involved – we call it the density index of IMC.
In Catalunya, the figure is just 0.5, while in Portugal, it is 4.1 (i.e. on average, every
municipality is involved in four different IMC arrangements).
The second measure...
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