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A Borrowed Mandate? Democratic Legitimacy of Inter-municipal Entities: A Comparative Analysis

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Abstract

This chapter discusses the democratic legitimacy of inter-municipal unions. Inter-municipal cooperation entities are frequently criticized for the “democratic deficit”, that is, lack of elected governing bodies, directly accountable to the citizens. The authors broaden this framework, by distinguishing the input, output and throughput dimensions of legitimacy. The empirical investigation is based mainly on the international survey of inter-municipal entities in four European countries: Portugal, Spain (Catalonia), Czech Republic and Poland. The chapter presents several survey indicators of legitimacy and analyses their variation between and within studied countries.

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Gendźwiłł, A., Lackowska, M. (2018). A Borrowed Mandate? Democratic Legitimacy of Inter-municipal Entities: A Comparative Analysis. 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_4

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