Inter-Municipal Cooperation as a Tool of Resilience in Small Communities

Abstract

The hypothesis of the paper is that the resilience of small communities can be engaged by inter-municipal cooperation. The economy of scale of public services is a great challenge for the small communities in Europe. The review of the international models will focus on the models based on the merge of the municipalities and on the models based on the engagement of inter-municipal cooperation. The literature on these reforms will be reviewed. Based on the hypothesis, the regulation on inter-municipal cooperation and service provision of the rural areas in Hungary in the last two decades will be shortly presented. As part of this research, empirical research was carried out in a Hungarian rural area, which has a strong inter-municipal cooperation. Similarly, empirical research has been carried out in a Slovenian rural area which is based on the merge of the small communities. The advantages and disadvantages of the inter-municipal model, and the model based on the merge of the communities were compared in the paper: efficient units of public services provision can be established not only by the merge of the communities but by the establishment of inter-municipal associations. Although decision-making is more complicated, the small communities could be more resilient based on this model, because the flexibility and the community building of the small municipal model prevail as well. The merge of the municipalities offers more efficient decision-making, but the resilience engaged by the grassroots service provision requires some administrative actions in this model