Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 27th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview WG1: Local Government Author(s) Eva Kovacs Corvinus University of Budapest Budapest Hungary Title Mapping the facilitators and obstacles of Inter- Municipal Cooperation: Systematic Qualitative Analyses in Hungary File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Eva Kovacs Abstract Inter-municipal cooperation (hereinafter: IMC) is an important element of local government reforms across Europe. There is a growing attention both in academic literature and on governments’ reform agendas to examine the forms and results of different IMCs. This wide-spread phenomenon did not avoid Hungary either. There has been a long discussion since the early 90s – the establishment of the current local government system including almost 3200 local governments with extremely broad scope of responsibilities – on the adequate forms of IMC. Despite of this permanent debate and the introduction of many government policies intending to stimulate the greater cooperation on local level, the rationalities behind IMC and the factors that might trigger local governments to engage in increased cooperation with their neighbors have not been systematically analyzed yet. Hence, this study aims to explore what factors might facilitate or ,the other way around, hinder the cooperation of local governments. There is strong evidence underlined also by previous studies that beyond the economic rationalities, such as cost reduction or increasing efficiency of service delivery by obtaining economies of scale, there might be other rationalities - such as administrative, political factors or the common identity - explaining the more active cooperative behavior of municipalities. The study presents an analysis on explaining the main motives (facilitators and obstacles) of creating IMC. In order to explore these explanatory factors 60 semi -structured interviews were conducted with mayors and senior officials from local governments across Hungary on their experiences related to municipal cooperation. These interview manuscripts were systematically coded and analyzed with qualitative data analyses software (MAXqda) in order to proceed more systematic and more transparent overview of underlying motives of IMC.
