Are Sticks in a Bundle Unbreakable? Governance Capacity of Intermunicipal Cooperation

Cooperation has been widely regarded as one of the most relevant undertaking at the local level across Europe. It has been associated to gains in scale and scope, overcoming problems associated to models of democracy, representativeness, accountability and issues of identity. Local governments are experiencing a time of profound transformation, with the redefinition of their structures, institutions, roles, competences, borders and scales. Inter-municipal cooperation presents itself as the main trend at European level for the challenges of scale and scope, the need to provide services across borders, to respond to globalization, with competitive territories at regional level, and to be able to provide services effectively, efficiently and economically. Regardless of their triggers, little has been assessed as to the governance capacity of these structures. This article seeks to assess levels of governance capacity across voluntary form of Portuguese intermunicipal cooperation. To that end, the article draws on existing toolkits (see Silva, Ferreira and Teles, 2018) and seeks to estimate varying levels of governance capacity, considering the following dimensions: efficiency, democracy, stability, scope of cooperation and nature of institutional structures. Empirically, this article presents the results of a survey applied to the executives of 278 mainland Portuguese municipalities, scoping perceptions of governance capacity across voluntary and mandatory intermunicipal cooperative structures. Hence, the article seeks to deepen the understanding of governance capacity as well as the significance of each dimension, allowing for a comparative assessment of different forms of cooperation.