Inter municipal cooperation is an important public service delivery reform (Arganoff and Mcguire 2003). Instead of focusing on consolidating governments, it facilitates functional consolidation of individual services across jurisdictions (Jacobs 2004; Hulst and Montfort 2007). As with privatization of government service delivery, the drivers of inter municipal cooperation are aimed at improving efficiency and gaining economies of scale, overcoming fiscal constraints, and often time dealing with political fragmentations. Moreover, inter municipal cooperation helps small rural and suburban municipalities confront limited resources and capacities. In a metropolitan region, it also helps counteract fragmentation and promote cohesive service delivery within area (Zeemering 2009).
With the increase in inter municipal cooperation, scholars are giving increasing attention to its causes, aspects, and consequences and implications of municipal cooperation (Kwon and Feiock 2010; Holzer and Fry 2011; Hefetz, Warner and Vigoda-Gadot 2012). Most of the research exploring factors promote inter municipal cooperation are confined in the case of U.S., or in selective states/counties in the U.S. context. There is also some research on continental Europe such as France, Italy and Spain where the average size of lower tier of local government is rather small (Hulst and Montfort 2007; Bel, Dijkgraaf, Fafeda and Gradus 2010). Although the promoting factors such as population, population density, economic conditions, financial and technical capacity, political fragmentation and others are well explored in the these areas and countries, factors of inter municipal cooperation where most of social and welfare service are provided through local government and the rapid aging society is underway such as in Japan or in Asia is not yet well explained (Jacobs 2004; Yokomichi 2010).
Against the background stated above, the paper analyzes the socio economic, fiscal and administrative capacity factors that promote inter municipal cooperation in Japan. Series of decentralization reform placed local government under heavy burden to provide various social and welfare services to the citizens, especially for seniors such as premium care, senior housing, special nursing care home, and others. When Japanese economy have experienced stagnation for decades and population is rapidly aging, municipal cooperation is one of the strategies for local government to sustain the services (Jacobs 2004; Yokomichi 2010; Aoki 2015). By exploring promoting factors, the paper tries to present the conditions of inter municipal cooperation in Japan. While the findings are most relevant in Japan, the discussion could be applied anywhere, especially in east Asian context, and it can contribute the future discussion how to sustain the services where demands are on increase and resources are scaring.
The paper begins with the theoretical considerations by reviewing literatures to identify the possible factors of inter municipal cooperation. Brief institutional and fiscal features of Japanese municipal cooperation are then explained. Empirical analysis of various promoting factors provides the implications and discussions for the strategies of the reform for sustainable service delivery.
IRSPM_2016_Full_Paper_Masao_Kikuchi_Collaborative_Governance.pdf 