Inter-municipal Cooperation Diversity, Evolution and Future Research Agenda

Abstract

This chapter brings together the communalities identified in the previous chapters. It underlines the fact that inter-municipal cooperation (IMC) in European countries is a highly diversified and growing phenomenon. In addition, it stresses the evolutive character of these arrangements as well as the difficulty in tracing its definition’s borders. The analysis it provides—especially regarding territorial issues, scope, motives and actors, and legitimacy of IMC—reinforces the relevance of the phenomenon and of the new research agenda we advance. Most of all, this is a call for increasing the research intensity on the topic, going beyond the comparison of institutional forms of IMC and addressing its most difficult questions: why is this phenomenon so widespread? Does it work? Is it manageable? Is it democratic?