Drivers and barriers of intermunicipal cooperation in local service delivery

Slovakia, like several other countries, has a highly fragmented system of local self-government. According to theoretical expectations, small municipalities with only a few hundred inhabitants often lack sufficient internal capacity to deliver local public services within their responsibilities (in-house production), especially when the services are complex and require specialised expertise. In cases when externalising service delivery (contracting out) fails, intermunicipal cooperation becomes a logical solution. Existing data suggest that intermunicipal cooperation may represent the lowest-cost delivery method for certain local public services. The goal of this paper is to identify the drivers and barriers of IMC in local public service delivery in Slovakia. Data were collected through a questionnaire survey and are used to document the extent to which intermunicipal cooperation is utilised, to compare associated costs, and to identify the drivers, barriers, and key benefits of intermunicipal cooperation in service delivery. Our findings suggest that economic and political-administrative barriers have a more substantial influence on intermunicipal cooperation decisions than legal-institutional constraints. While municipalities operate under similar external legal and administrative frameworks, it is their internal capacity, local political culture, and transaction cost-related considerations that most significantly distinguish cooperating from non-cooperating municipalities.