Formulation of a Framework for Organizing an Inter-Municipal Cooperation in Regional Public Services DeliveryCase Study: Central Urban Region of Mazandaran Province

Local governments are the most important provider of public services and municipalities, as the most important executive body at the local level, are responsible for this within the defined limits of the city. A review of the research background shows that the individual efforts of small municipalities in providing regional public services efficiently have not been successful and will lead to a waste of resources. Therefore, inter-municipal cooperation is adopted by municipalities as the most flexible strategy of regionalism and effective solution to overcome problems resulting from political and functional fragmentation. In addition to protecting the independence and identity of municipalities, this strategy can help to form a cohesive network of collaboration and synergistic win-win relationships between organizations, leading to efficient and effective regional public services delivery and resolving some wicked regional problems by mobilization of resources. In Iran, municipalities are required to provide a small number of regional public services. In the central urban region of Mazandaran province, the inefficiency of regional services delivery is very high in the three fields of waste management, rescue and fire protection, and public transportation intra/inter cities. The individual efforts of municipalities in providing such services in the absence of a codified framework for inter-municipal cooperation in accordance with regional conditions, existing discouraging laws and the country's spatial management system lead to a waste of resources and environmental degradation. All these lead to danger to the health and lives of residents. The method of the present research is applied in nature and it is descriptive based on the objectives. Also, according to the qualitative approach of the research, the data collection method includes two types of secondary data analysis and semi-structured in-depth interview techniques with purposive sampling. Research findings indicate that the organization of regional services delivery in the studied selected services, especially within the municipalities of Amol, Babol, Qaemshahr and Sari as the central urban areas of Mazandaran province can eventually become a regulation leverage in all municipalities in this region. The present study, after reviewing the relevant theoretical and empirical foundations, in answering to the research questions has attempted to identify and analyze the way regional services are provided by municipalities in Mazandaran province in three selected services. Then, by applying the guidance resulting from the study of international best practices in accordance with the conditions of the region, laws and institutions of spatial management in the country and examining the eight key factors resulting from the prescriptive research model, formulate its proposed framework in four phases and twenty steps. The phases of the proposed framework for organizing inter-municipal cooperation in providing regional public services in the central urban region of Mazandaran are as follows: phase zero) pre-planning; phase one) structural organization; phase two) organizing the process; phase three) monitoring and control. The pre-planning phase concerns the feasibility study and initiation of cooperation. The structural organization phase deals with the main components of cooperation formation. The phase of organizing the process seeks to review and implement the most optimal form of cooperation, and the control and monitoring phase seeks to evaluate and refine.