Le caratteristiche politico-istituzionali delle Unioni di Comuni: evidenze empiriche dall’Emilia-Romagna

The essay analyses the institutional features of four Unioni di Comuni which reached an high level of inter-municipal cooperation, through the study of the statute of the authority and a survey addressed to the city councilors. The consensus dynamics, the ways in which the political direction is expressed and the withdrawal process are taken into account. Both common characteristics (the stability of majority parties, highly consensual relations and similar opinions about efficacy and efficiency in the management) and distinctive features (very differentiated internal governance, statutory rules both concise or detailed) emerge from the study. Given that it is not possible to identify a standard model of advanced Unione di Comuni, some characteristics are shared by all the studied cases