The introduction of mandatory inter-municipal cooperation in small municipalities. Preliminary lessons from Italy

• Pages: 331-346
• Published date: 09 April 2018
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPSM-03-2017-0071
• Date: 09 April 2018
• Author: Davide Giacomini,Alessandro Sancino,Anna Simonetto
• Subject Matter: Public policy & environmental management,Politics,Public adminstration & management

The introduction of mandatory

inter-municipal cooperation in

small municipalities

Preliminary lessons from Italy

Davide Giacomini

Dipartimento di Economia e Management, Universita degli Studi di Brescia,

Brescia, Italy

Alessandro Sancino

Department of Public Leadership and Social Enterprise,

Open University Business School, Milton Keynes, UK, and

Anna Simonetto

Dipartimento di Medicina Molecolare e Traslazionale,

Universita degli Studi di Brescia, Brescia, Italy

Abstract

Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to study the effects of mandatory inter-municipal cooperation (IMC)

in small Italian municipalities. Data from 280 small Italian municipalities on the effects of IMC in terms of

higher efficiency, better effectiveness of local public services, and greater institutional legitimacy of the small

municipalities participating in IMC have been investigated against four variables: size, geographical area,

type of inter-municipal integration, and IMC membership (the presence in the IMC of a bigger municipality,

the so-called big brother).

Design/methodology/approach –Data were gathered from a mai l survey that was sent to a ran dom

sample of 1,360 chief fin ancial officers actin g in municipalities of u nder 5,000 inhabitan ts, stratified by

size (0-1,000 and 1,001 -5,000) and geograph ic area (North, Center, and South) criteria. T o analyze the

dependency relations hips between the three pote ntial effects of partic ipating in IMC and poss ible

explanatory variables, the authors used a logistic regression model as the benefits were binarily

categorized (presenc e or absence of benefits).

Findings –The findings show that in mo re than two-thirds of the municip alities participating in IMC , there

were benefits in terms of c osts reduction and better publ ic services, whereas greate r institutional legitimacy

was detected in about half of the cases. The sta tistical analysis wit h logistic regression hi ghlighted

that IMC type is particula rly critical for explai ning successful IMC. In pa rticular, the positiv e effects of

IMC were mainly detected in those small municipaliti es that promoted a service d elivery organizatio n

rather than participat ing in service delivery agreements or opting for mixed arrangements of joint public

services delivery.

Originality/value –The paper focuses on small municipalities where studies are usually scant. The analysis

highlighted that the organizational setting is particularly critical for explaining a successful IMC.

Keywords Public service, Service delivery, Local authorities, Local government reform,

Inter-municipal cooperation, Public networks

Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction

Over the last 50 years, in all European countries, municipalities –and especially smaller

ones –have encountered increasing difficulties in satisfying the demands of citizens in public

services delivery (e.g. Hulst and van Montfort, 2012). In this context, in order to deal with the

challenge of delivering better public services with scarce financial resources, many governments

have adopted policies for promoting inter-municipal cooperation (IMC) to overcome the limit of

sub-optimally sized historical municipal borders for an efficient and effective provision of local

public services (e.g. Bel et al., 2012; Blaeschke, 2014; Rayle and Zegras, 2013). Among others, the

International Journal of Public

Sector Management

Vol. 31 No. 3, 2018

pp. 331-346

© Emerald PublishingLimited

0951-3558

DOI 10.1108/IJPSM-03-2017-0071

Received 26 May 2017

Revised 25 August 2017

13 October 2017

Accepted 15 October 2017

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

www.emeraldinsight.com/0951-3558.htm

331

The

introduction of

mandatory

IMC

main benefits of joint provision of public services would include improvements from economies

of scale and the internalization of some transaction costs.

However,there is no unanimityover the fact that IMCactually brings savingsand it should

be remembered that with regard to IMC, there are significant concerns regarding

accountability and transparency. Scholars, policy makers, and public managers have been

extensively debatingon what the conditionsare that make IMC reallywork (e.g. Bel et al., 2010;

Cristofoli and Markovic, 2016; Frere et al., 2014). The aim of this paper is to contribute on this

issue by presenting an original researchaimed at exploring some possible organizational and

contextualvariables of successful IMC in small Italian municipalities usinglogistic regression.

The need for more studies on smallmunicipalities has been explicitly identifiedas a gap to be

filled in the literature (Mohr et al., 2010; Teles, 2016).

Since we are aware of the different meanings of IMC (e.g. Hulst et al., 2009), we follow in

this paper the definition provided by Steiner (2003, p. 553): IMC can be defined as “the

fulfilment of a public municipal task by two or more municipalities jointly or by a thirdlegal

entity, whereby the task fulfilment simultaneously serves at least two municipalities and the

participating municipalities participate directly (‘performing’) or indirectly (‘organizing’).”

It is important to highlight that IMC in the European context is different from the inter-

municipal agreements typicalof the US context (e.g. Holzer and Fry,2011). Moreover, it is also

important to pointout that the focus of this paper is onIMC for the direct provision of public

services,and not for other aims, such as, for example,contracting in and out (e.g.Brown, 2008)

and/or for development and fundraising tasks (Goldkind and Pardasani, 2012).

The structure of our paper is the following: the Section 2 briefly reviews the main

literature on IMC, Section 3 provides a contextual backdrop for the Italian case, Section 4

describes the methodology of the research, and Section 5 highlights the main findings of the

research. The last section offers some concluding remarks.

2. Inter-municipal cooperation

A theoretical backdrop

The topic of IMC has gained momentum in the scientific debate over the last ten years.

The economic and fiscal crisis that began in 2008 brought tensions in government

finances and the resulting austerity policies have heightened the need for local

governments to rethink their services in order to increase their efficiency (Bel and

Warner, 2015; Meneguzzo et al., 2013). Mandatory IMC is one of the policies traditionally

proposed to reduce local governments’spending. Specifically, there are two main

perspectives by which IMC has been approached.

The first took a policy-making perspective. Within this mainstream, some studies looked

at IMC as a mode of public service delivery to be compared with other possible institutional

arrangements, such as, for example, privatization and contracting out (e.g. Bel et al., 2010;

Mohr et al., 2010) or amalgamation (e.g. Dollery et al., 2009; Hanes, 2015; Reingewertz, 2012).

Some other studies investigated the effects of IMC on democracy and subsidiarity

(Mäeltsemees et al., 2013) and the role that incentives have played for prompting IMC

(Sorrentino and Simonetta, 2013); on this matter, several studies (e.g. Osterrieder et al., 2006;

Parrado Díez, 2006) highlighted that legislation and incentives can draw opportunities and

constraints for cooperation and make some institutional arrangements more interesting

than others.

The second perspective looked at the governance of IMC (e.g. Bock, 2006; Goldkind and

Pardasani, 2012; Graddy and Chen, 2006; Sancton, 2005; Sørensen, 2007). Here, the

possibility to reduce coordination and transactional costs with effective governance is one of

the main triggers behind the positive inclination toward IMC. A comparative research on

IMC in eight European countries showed a great variety of solutions for cooperation

across the different countries (Hulst and van Montfort, 2012); in this respect, according to

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