Intermunicipal Cooperation in the Czech Republic: A Gap Between the Legal Framework and the Need for Efficiency?

A Czech municipal level is characterized by, inter alia, an asymmetrical and highly fragmented municipal structure, a direct access of representatives of municipalities to the central level through the accumulation of mandates and mayoral political movements, and an opposition to the amalgamation of municipalities due to bad experience of the communist era. Considering the combination of these stated factors, intermunicipal cooperation forms a natural path to seeking efficiency and ensuring capacity of governance. Municipal cooperation is quite widespread in the Czech Republic; however, in many cases it is only based on the cooperation within a single sector without any deeper institutionalization. The presented paper is based on the thesis of relation between a weak legislative delimitation of intermunicipal cooperation and lacking support from higher levels on the one hand and a limited use of municipal cooperation on the other. In order to identify the connections, an analysis of the government's concept of the reform of intermunicipal cooperation pursuing the French model will be applied, which will serve to demonstrate a legal dimension, as well as an analysis of the concept of the so-called Centers of Joint Services developed by the Union of Towns and Municipalities of the Czech Republic, which will demonstrate the real needs for enhanced capacities of governance in municipalities. In addition, an added value of the paper should also rest in a reflection of a current development in the Czech communal politics, which is resistant to initiation and implementation of reforms due to imaginary trench warfare between the interests of small and large municipalities.