Characterising strategic collaboration of large Swiss municipalities

Abstract

By analysing legislative programmes of all Swiss municipalities having more than 20,000 inhabitants (in 2018) and in two different time periods (2010 and 2020), this study examines the general place of collaboration in municipal strategies, by paying attention to the various public fields and degree of complexity in terms of actor constellations. As in real life, collaboration occupies also an important part of the large Swiss municipal governments’ strategic reflections. Yet, a certain gap exists regarding the weight given to public fields. Indeed, politically selling fields seem to get more place in legislative programmes than in real life. Collaboration, such as planned in municipal strategies, involves a large diversity of actors and thereby achieves a certain complexity which clearly goes beyond the intermunicipal level. The degree of complexity does not evolve over time but inhabitants become a strategically more important collaborative actor for municipalities.