Vertical and Horizontal Local Cooperation in South Tyrol, Tyrol and Graubünden

In the context of recent societal changes such as aging population or youth migration as well as institutional administrative reforms, municipalities are increasingly faced with new challenges and have often difficulties to maintain a high level of efficient services for their citizens. This applies also to municipalities in the Alps. This paper is part of a PhD project which focuses on the topic of cooperation of municipalities and elaborates on the question how far local cooperation is able to provide answers to new complex challenges of municipalities according to Mayors. The paper analyses local autonomy and local cooperation in three alpine Regions which are also bordering at each other: South Tyrol in Italy, Tyrol in Austria and Graubünden in Switzerland. The paper looks first into the (subnational) legal framework which allows cooperation of Municipalities and describes then how vertical and horizontal cooperation is implemented by selected municipalities in these territories. The innovative aspect of this paper lies in the comparative element, from which good practices of cooperation should emerge which shall provide insights on local institutions as actor within a multilevel system.