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Choices In Regional Governance Structures: Special Districts As Collaboration Mechanisms, Jayce L. Farmer

Working Group on Interlocal Services Cooperation

This paper uses contextual explanations of regional governance to explore how the limitations to voluntary regionalism can lead to the more centralized, more regulated method of using regional special districts. An ICA perspective is used to discuss the range of choices in institutional arrangements available to jurisdictions. Motivations that jurisdictions may have to use more versus less autonomous methods of ICA are outlined to frame how regional districts fall within this spectrum. A rational choice perspective is also employed to identify the collective and selective benefits that motivate local actors to cooperate, as well as identify the potential transaction cost …