SLOVENIA
It should be noted that joint implementation of municipal services is relatively well established in practice of old industrialized countries, while the post-socialist countries encountered this phenomenon a bit later. The reason can largely be attributed to the fact that processes of forced mergers of municipalities during the socialist socio-economic regime led to the situation that democratization fostered pressures to materialize the principles of local self-government also in practice. This in turn led to the formation of, on average, very small municipalities in these countries. With the emergence of fiscal constraints and increasing awareness among citizens regarding the requirements for quality of local public services, the municipalities found themselves under distinct pressure to reduce both the administrative and other operating costs, but at the same time not to affect the quality of services. Consequently,
Shared Services and Their Impact on the Efficiency of Municipalities
especially very small municipalities found themselves under particular pressures, due to the inability to exploit economies of scale and limited availability of capacities and competencies.
This is why they have relatively limited opportunities to maximize the efficiency of their performance - in fact, these municipalities can, besides to mergers, only exploit the positive effects of inter-municipal cooperation.
In particular, Slovenia is a country with a relatively small-sized municipalities (more than 50% of them have less than 5,000 inhabitants), and the intermediate tier of government (i.e., regions, counties etc.) is missing (Pevcin, 2012). Following the above discussion, this gives a fertile ground to envisage the future potentials and trends of municipal service delivery.
Following, the below stated evidence shows the following positive effects of inter-municipal cooperation in the joint provision of services, which should be understood as a relatively good basis for the implementation in Slovenia (Municipal Cooperation, 2014):
• Reducing the administrative costs of operating of the municipalities through cost-sharing for salaries, purchases of material, data processing etc.
• Enabling quicker socio-economic development through joint development initiatives and spatial planning, dividing the costs of setting up business incubators, business and technology parks etc.
• Exploiting economies of scale in collection and disposal of waste through the joint implementation of services and joint financing of investments in the field of water management.
• Cost-sharing in health, education and transport services through sharing the technologies and other resources, as well as with joint organization of activities.
The existing field evidence shows that some sort of transformation is already occurring in the modes of municipal service delivery in Slovenia, as the number of the so-called joint municipal administrative bodies (JMA) is increasing. Namely, since 2007 the number of these bodies has rapidly grown, and currently more than 90 percent of municipalities are members of at least one of these bodies. However, the analysis of tasks performed by these bodies indicates that the vast majority of them are active in the fields of authoritative administrative tasks (Fonda & Žohar, 2015), but there is a lack of bodies focusing on joint public service or utilities delivery. Consequently, this should indicate further possible development, taking into account also the above stated benefits.
7. CONCLUSION
Inter-municipal cooperation and joint provision of municipal services is an alternative to the private provision of services. This kind of cooperation can lower transaction costs, possibly achieve greater economies of scale, increase efficiency etc. The advantages of inter-municipal cooperation can be larger for smaller municipalities, where transaction costs are usually lower in the production of public services in comparison to private production, and they are usually also lacking the availability of private providers. Inter-municipal cooperation is a common form of provision of Inter-municipal services in many countries. An overview shows the diversity of forms of cooperation, both within individual country as well as between countries. Cooperation occurs either in simple forms, such as agreements, conventions, plans, communities that do not require the status of a legal entity or establishment of a new administrative apparatus, or either in more formalized and institutionalized forms, such as consortia, associations, joint municipal administration etc. Forms of cooperation vary between countries also
small financially non-autonomous municipalities, should find big advantages of inter-municipal cooperation as a way to provide inter-municipal services. Therefore, it is necessary to promote such cooperation, and especially municipalities themselves have to realize the benefits and the possibilities of such cooperation. In this way, at least partially, the problem of lack of available human capital, financial and other resources in smaller municipalities could be solved. Another alternative might be the amalgamation of municipalities.
Finally, it should be noted that the topic addressed in this paper has not yet been the subject of a wide-ranging research in Slovenia. Further research on concrete examples of municipal joint delivery of certain local public services and utilities would be necessary and could give useful information to public policy makers and to municipalities, especially how the delivery and management of municipal services and utilities could be improved, which is extremely important during the period of ongoing fiscal constraints.
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