A look into practice: which territorial governance in the Alpine area?

Paper proposal, Section 26, Panel 4 Local governments face both increasing demands from citizens (in terms of high quality of public services) and expectations from higher-ranked legislators (for efficiency in service delivery). Not all municipalities are able to fulfill these two expectations due to limited financial or human resources, especially those with a small number of inhabitants or a peripherical geographic position. Inter-municipal cooperation is often mentioned in the literature as a possible solution for local governance challenges. Is this affirmation shared also by local leaders and in practice? This paper will elaborate on this question and thus to what extent municipal cooperation (and amalgamation) is able to provide answers to local challenges. To this purpose empirical evidence on the implementation of intermunicipal cooperation and its evaluation in the opinion of local leaders (mayors) in three alpine areas (Grisons, South Tyrol, Tyrol) will be provided and discussed. Alpine regions face shared challenges with all other municipalities in the relevant countries but also peculiar challenges due to their geographical context. Against this background the question arises on how alpine municipalities face governance challenges and how the selected strategies (intermunicipal cooperation and/or amalgamation) are evaluated by local political leaders.