Inter-municipal cooperation based on Institutional Collective Action: the effects of public health consortia in Brazil

Abstract This article adopts institutional collective action (ICA) to verify the difference in collective effects when observing inter-municipal cooperation arrangements to provide public health in Brazil (public health consortia). The study compares municipalities that joined consortia in 2009/2010 and municipalities that did not join until 2015. The analysis estimated collective effects of public health consortia and how they relate to contextual variables of policies in this area in the country. The methodology is longitudinal-retrospective deductive research, using the difference-in-differences statistical technique. The results show that municipalities engaged in local inter-municipal cooperation to provide public health in Brazil improved the services in terms of outpatient appointments and the number of primary health care (PHC) consultations, as well as reducing infant deaths.