Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Justifying Interlocal Cooperation: Feasibility Studies, Financing And Cost Allocation, Art Holdsworth

Working Group on Interlocal Services Cooperation

This White Paper overviews the obstacles and benefits to interlocal collaboration on public services. A major emphasis is placed on understanding the preparation of feasibility studies and the issues involved in allocating the costs of shared services among communities.

Exploring Interlocal Cooperation In Public Safety: An Annotated Bibliography , Shanthi Mohankumar

Working Group on Interlocal Services Cooperation

This bibliography summarizes fourteen studies of interlocal collaboration in fire and/or police services. It directs scholars to research materials that examine the patterns of cooperation and relative financial and other advantages (if any) of contracting out these services to other governments. It also includes studies related to the consolidation of police and fire services. Though not exhaustive, this collection of studies includes materials from different time periods and with diverse approaches.

Counting Competitors: Relative Gains And Cooperation In Metropolitan America, Skip Krueger

Working Group on Interlocal Services Cooperation

No abstract provided.

The Business Case For Interlocal Cooperation, Art Holdsworth

Working Group on Interlocal Services Cooperation

No abstract provided.

The Distributional Consequences Of Interlocal Agreement Cost Allocation Strategies, Eric A. Scorsone

Working Group on Interlocal Services Cooperation

In an era of fiscal stress for many local governments in the United States, intergovernmental cooperation has become a focus for cost savings. Cooperation and consolidation is a recognition that existing boundaries and service delivery mechanism simply are too inefficient and burdensome for a community to maintain. City and county officials face a basic tradeoff in assessing the merits of cooperation involving the desire of many citizens for sovereignty and local decision making authority versus the potential cost savings associated with the economies of scale of larger government units. As intergovernmental agreements are negotiated, the issue of cost allocation among …

Policy Networks And Institutional Collective Action: A Research Agenda, John T. Scholz, Richard C. Feiock, T. K. Ahn

Working Group on Interlocal Services Cooperation

Policy fragmentation in the American federalist system leads to inefficiencies as decisions by one authority impose positive and negative externalities on other authorities and their constituencies. We focus on the role of policy networks in shaping coordinated decisions that enhance the joint outcomes among governmental authorities. We advance two competing perspectives relating networks to collective action, one emphasizing the role of tightly-clustered "strong-tie" relationships capable of enhancing the credibility of commitments among network members, and the other emphasizing the role of extensive, "weak-tie" relationships linking diverse stakeholders in enhancing the shared information required to coordinate collective decisions.

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City Council Members And The Representation Funtion In Intergovernmental Decision Making, Eric Zeemering

Working Group on Interlocal Services Cooperation

Local elected officials provide a representation function for their constituents, expressing citizen preferences for public goods and services and integrating public preferences into government decisions about how to provide and produce public goods and services. In an increasingly networked world, the provision and production of public goods and services frequently occurs through intergovernmental collaboration and inter-local agreements. Public administrators are often viewed as the primary actors in forming intergovernmental agreements, but what role do elected officials play in policy decisions about collaboration? I argue elected officials’ representation function in intergovernmental policymaking can be conceptualized through the analysis of three dimensions …