Inter-municipal cooperation and local government perspectives on community health and wellbeing

Globally, local governments face increasing service delivery demands and citizen expectations, including in relation to community health and wellbeing. Inter-municipal cooperation is one strategy to respond to those demands. In Australia, however, there is limited empirical research about the types of inter-municipal cooperation local governments engage in and about their perspectives on community health and wellbeing. Without such knowledge, limits are placed on strategies the sector can develop and deploy to collectively tackle complex issues that extend beyond municipal boundaries. Responding to that gap in research and those consequential challenges for strategy, we surveyed municipal personnel in all 29 local governments in the state of Tasmania and included questions to quantify inter-municipal cooperation using social network analysis. Results show the extent to which local governments cooperate across seven domains and reveal that participants prioritised community health and wellbeing and described funding, collaboration, legislation, and systems thinking as ways to advance their contributions to that priority. We found social network analysis to be a useful method to measure inter-municipal cooperation; however, further research into how and why local governments collaborate across diverse service types would help inform how those services can be enhanced, including for community health and wellbeing.

Points for practitioners

• Inter-municipal cooperation is important for local governments to manage resources with increasing service delivery demands and citizen expectations.
• This Australian study shows how inter-municipal cooperation can be quantified and articulated visually using social network analysis—a method that could measure changes over time and enable cross-jurisdiction comparisons.
• In Tasmania:
  • ◦ inter-municipal cooperation occurs in distinct regional networks and more research about how and why these networks function across diverse service types could inform service enhancement; and
  • ◦ those in local government want to advance their contributions to community health and wellbeing and need support in the form of funding, collaboration, legislation, and systems thinking capacity.