This book presents an overview of inter-municipal cooperation in eight European countries. Each country study sketches its attendant forms, their institutional design, the tasks and competencies attributed to joint authorities of municipalities and the way inter-municipal cooperation operates in practice. Both performance and democratic aspects of cooperation are recurring topics. The last chapter of the book presents a comparative analysis and reflects on the future of inter-municipal cooperation. Inter-municipal cooperation is a phenomenon that, despite its ubiquity, has not been subject to systematic comparative research.

Dr. Rudie Hulst (1953) and Dr. André van Montfort (1959) teach public administration at the Department of Public Administration and Organisation Studies at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Their main topic of research is intergovernmental relations.