Inter-municipal cooperation performance measurement: a critical literature review and research agenda

Inter-municipal cooperation (IMC) is a popular policy lacking appropriate performance measurement. This paper critically examines academic literature on the performance measurement of inter-municipal cooperation. It suggests a starting point for new evaluation research specific to IMC. Relevant papers are analysed to identify and explore potential research paths and formulate an agenda. The main criticality tackled by this review regards the "measurement for the sake of measurement" mindset, which leads to unbalance towards quantitative data, which is insufficient to reflect the complexities of public administration. Starting from the results, we posit a research agenda for further investigation of the performance of local shared services.