Inter-communal cooperation and democracy : A case study about local government- and associations of local authority representatives view on cooperation

Municipalities today are facing several major challenges in the near future, which has led to that questions about how municipalities should handle these challenges are more frequently raised. Inter-communal cooperation has been highlighted as the given answer to these problems and challenges, but as the phenomenon is becoming more common the impact inter-communal cooperation have on matters such as democracy are increasingly raised. As a result of the increasing participation in inter-communal cooperation local democracy is facing a number of problems of legitimacy because of the uncertainty regarding accountability and communal inhabitants rights to influence. It is in this problem area the present essay is based. The aim of the study is to gain an understanding of how local government- and association of local authorities representatives view inter-communal cooperation and democracy, which in concrete terms means both examining what motives to inter-communal cooperation are highlighted by the representatives, and whether democratic values are discussed in relation to inter-communal cooperation and if so, in what ways? The study is conducted as a qualitative case study of an association of local authorities. The method used is semi-structured interviews that are carried out with representatives of the association of local authorities in question and one of its member-municipalities. As a complement to the interview study a smaller document study is also conducted. The results of the study show that the forces that are highlighted by the local government- and association of local authorities representatives are mainly linked to aspects such as efficiency and economy. Furthermore, democratic aspects, even though they often occurs in discussions about cooperation, are almost exclusively about the municipalities own opportunity to influence and rarely on the democratic values accountability and representativeness. The conclusions that can be drawn from the study is that local government- and association of local authorities representatives does not view inter-communal cooperation as problematic from a democratic perspective; in some cases they are not even aware that the problem exists