Abstract
Abstract This article analyzes the factors that affect local governments’ decision-making processes on whether to engage in cooperative agreements through intermunicipal consortia. Several studies have examined this issue in Western developed countries, but there is a gap in the literature regarding the phenomenon in the developing world. The research addresses this gap and observes the Brazilian local governments’ policies on waste services, focusing on cooperative agreements such as interlocal consortia. These arrangements may be a solution to the political and managerial challenges of providing public services in many areas, including waste collection, treatment, and disposal. However, it is still unclear what factors influence municipalities in their decision to cooperate. Based on cross-sectional research exploring 963 Brazilian municipalities and on the perspective of Institutional Collective Action, this study identified characteristics of communities, transaction characteristics of goods, and the structure of policy networks that influence the local governments in their decision to work cooperatively. The findings shed light on the field of public policies, particularly those carried out through intermunicipal consortia.
Highlights
The adoption of alternative arrangements to provide public services has been discussed as a strategy to overcome criticisms of traditional public administration and the participation of the private sector in public services delivery (Bel & Warner, 2015)
| RAP An analysis of intermunicipal consortia to provide waste services based on institutional collective action governments lack legitimacy for adopting coercive mechanisms on this matter (Garson, 2009), and, in the absence of a regulatory framework, metropolitan region councils cannot govern the participation of municipalities (Fernandes & Araújo, 2015)
| RAP An analysis of intermunicipal consortia to provide waste services based on institutional collective action of the political parties and, for this reason, the model adopts the binary variable that assigns “1” if the mayor belongs to a base party policy of the governor or the president, and “0” if they belong to another party
Summary
The adoption of alternative arrangements to provide public services has been discussed as a strategy to overcome criticisms of traditional public administration and the participation of the private sector in public services delivery (Bel & Warner, 2015). The decision to adopt the rational choice to analyze the results considers the fact that most studies on solid waste services focus on the costs of the service (Bel & Warner, 2015), and address the phenomenon in Western developed countries. These characteristics expose the lack of attention to potential differences in the local governments’ motivation to engage in cooperative arrangements to provide public services. To understand the determinants of cooperation among local governments, since the primary concern of the Institutional Collective Action is the motivation of the actors (Baldwin, Chen, & Cole, 2018)
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