The Tasks of Elected Officials within the Policy Process of Interlocal Cooperation

Interlocal cooperation provides local governments with a third means of service provision, after direct provision and contracting out, that allows problems to be addressed at the regional level. Much of the academic literature on this topic places appointed officials as those who take the lead role in these types of arrangements. This research explores the involvement of elected officials, specifically city mayors, in interlocal cooperation. Based on 64 responses from mayors in the southeast region, this research finds statistically significant relationships between mayoral comfort level with tasks associated with interlocal cooperation and a number of variables including city size and racial homogeneity. Additional attention is paid to how elected officials communicate with other governments and with the public in the cooperative context, through both quantitative and qualitative data derived from the survey instrument.