The Problem of Democratic Anchorage for Interlocal Agreements

More attention must be given to the performance of interlocal agreements (ILAs) as they continue to grow in popularity as a mode of service provision in U.S. cities. This study scrutinizes the democratic performance of ILAs, drawing theoretical insights from the literature on network governance. Because ILAs shift service responsibility from individual cities to multijurisdictional arrangements, these tools may lead to complaints about the responsiveness of the service to the public in the individual units served by the multijurisdictional arrangement. Thus, democratic anchorage is central to assessments of ILA performance. This study evaluates democratic anchorage by identifying concerns with ILAs in interviews with a sample of local elected officials in Michigan. The concerns then are discussed in the context of the institutional collective action framework, a theoretical foundation that has become popular for explaining the emergence of ILAs and regional cooperation.

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