Suchergebnisse

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to study the effects of mandatory inter-municipal cooperation (IMC) in small Italian municipalities. Data from 280 small Italian municipalities on the effects of IMC in terms of higher efficiency, better effectiveness of local public services, and greater institutional legitimacy of the small municipalities participating in IMC have been investigated against four variables: size, geographical area, type of inter-municipal integration, and IMC membership (the presence in the IMC of a bigger municipality, the so-called big brother).Design/methodology/approachData were gathered from a mail survey that was sent to a random sample of 1,360 chief financial officers acting in municipalities of under 5,000 inhabitants, stratified by size (0-1,000 and 1,001-5,000) and geographic area (North, Center, and South) criteria. To analyze the dependency relationships between the three potential effects of participating in IMC and possible explanatory variables, the authors used a logistic regression model as the benefits were binarily categorized (presence or absence of benefits).FindingsThe findings show that in more than two-thirds of the municipalities participating in IMC, there were benefits in terms of costs reduction and better public services, whereas greater institutional legitimacy was detected in about half of the cases. The statistical analysis with logistic regression highlighted that IMC type is particularly critical for explaining successful IMC. In particular, the positive effects of IMC were mainly detected in those small municipalities that promoted a service delivery organization rather than participating in service delivery agreements or opting for mixed arrangements of joint public services delivery.Originality/valueThe paper focuses on small municipalities where studies are usually scant. The analysis highlighted that the organizational setting is particularly critical for explaining a successful IMC.

The concept of the water-energy-food (W-E-F) nexus has quickly ascended to become a global framing for resource management policies. Critical studies, however, are questioning its value for assessing the sustainability of local livelihoods. These critiques flow in part from the perception that the majority of influential nexus analyses begin from a large-scale, implicitly top-down perspective on resource dynamics. This can lead to eciency narratives that reinforce existing power dynamics without adequate consideration of local priorities. Here, we present a community-scale perspective on large W-E-F oriented infrastructure. In doing so, we link the current debate on the nexus with alternative approaches to embrace questions of water distribution, political scales, and resource management. The data for this paper come from a survey of 549 households conducted around two large-scale irrigation and hydropower dams in the Upper Blue Nile basin of Ethiopia. The data analysis involved descriptive statistics, logistic analysis, and multinomial logistic analysis. The two case studies presented show that the impact of dams and the perception thereof is socially diverse. Hydropower dams and irrigation schemes tend to enhance social dierences and may therefore lead to social transformation and disintegration. This becomes critical when it leads to higher vulnerability of some groups. To take these social factors/conditions into consideration, one needs to acknowledge the science-policy interface and make the nexus approach more political. The paper concludes that if the nexus approach is to live up to its promise of addressing sustainable development goals by protecting the livelihoods of vulnerable populations, it has to be applied in a manner that addresses the underlying causes that produce winners and losers in large-scale water infrastructure developments.