Abstract
Despite the well-known differences regarding the level of devolution in Portugal and Spain, inter-municipal associations (IMAs) emerged as a relevant piece of the institutional systems. The strategies to foster these bodies, however, have been different. While Portugal opted to promote them very clearly, on the verge of employing a top-down logic, Spanish authorities are trying to control IMAs and even reduce their number. Despite the different scenarios, both countries are striving to ensure the governance capacity of inter-municipal collaborative endeavours, struggling for the emergency of a new political actor able to function effectively. This chapter seeks to present an index of governance capacity and measure the performance of both countries across the different dimensions of the index.
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Notes
- 1.
For the scope of cooperation, the reported areas were coded according to the following range: 0 areas were coded as 0, 1 or 2 areas were coded as 1, from 3 to 5 areas were coded as 2, from 6 to 8 areas were coded as 3, from 8 to 10 areas were coded as 4, and finally 10–12 received a value of 5. As for efficiency, it reports the sum of the differences between the effects of the association’s activities and the reasons for creating the IMA. Negative numbers were coded as 0, and in other cases, the resulting values were directly reported to the new variable. Regarding the nature of institutional structures, we reported the values from the variable municipalities’ efforts and recoded from 0.1 to 0.29 as 5, from 0.30 to 0.49 as 4, from 0.50 to 0.69 as 3, from 0.70 to 0.89 as 1, and finally 0.90 or more as 1. Concerning the dimension of democracy, it is the result of the sum of the differences between the interest in local municipalities and that in the activities of IMAs. Negative values were coded as 0, less than 2 were coded as 1, from 3 to 4 as 2, from 5 to 6 as 3, from 6 to 7 as 4, and 8 as 5. Finally, stability was transformed using the following values: from 1 to 4 as 1, from 5 to 9 as 2, from 10 to 15 as 3, from 16 to 19 as 4, and 20 as 5.
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Acknowledgements
Esther Pano Puey would like to acknowledge the support of the programme CSO2013-48641-C2-1-R (Ministry of Economy) Project—Local Government Reform, efficiency, rescaling and democracy (LoGoRef) and also the programme from the Catalan Government 2014 SGR 838. Patrícia Silva would like to acknowledge the support of the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, and the European Social Fund through the Operational Programme Human Capital (HCOP), under grant SFRH/BPD/93149/2013.
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Silva, P., Puey, E.P. (2018). Striving for Local Governance Capacity in Portugal and Spain. In: Teles, F., Swianiewicz, P. (eds) Inter-Municipal Cooperation in Europe. Governance and Public Management. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62819-6_5
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