Subnational governance as a negotiated arena: the case of intermunicipal cooperation

Intermunicipal arrangements have added layers of complexity to the functioning of contemporary subnational governance (Teles, 2023). In several cases this translated into new institutional dynamics and demanded flexibility and adaptability from public administrations (Teles and Swianiewicz, 2018). In addition, issues related to capacity, accountability, efficiency are now quite common (Denters et al. 2016, Jacobsen 2022; Blåka et al., 2021). Classical literature on government, public administration and democratic governance fails to capture these dynamics (Teles & Swianiewicz, 2018; Sørensen & Torfing, 2009). Formal institutional frameworks and analytical tools have become less capable of: (1) explaining diversity in subnational governance, particularly the ones resulting from these collaborative and voluntary arrangements; (2) capturing the informality of contemporary local governance arrangements and their impact on service delivery and policy formulation; (3) explaining actors’ behaviors, democratic links, and policy tools. In this paper I argue that the available conceptual frameworks and analytical models need to be “expanded” and suggest exploring intermunicipal cooperation as a negotiated arena (Teles, 2023). The arena is seen as the ideational space that structures the constitutive elements of governance arrangements (place, scale, networks, and coordination), where actors with specific attributes engage in repetitive interactions framed by rules of negotiation and governance narratives. The paper analyses a case study of intermunicipal cooperation in Portugal as the outcome of these interactions, illustrating the relevance of the suggested framework.