Samenvatting

Many tasks will be decentralized to municipalities in the Netherlands in the coming years. To deal with these challenges, central government encourages municipal mergers, while municipalities often prefer a light form of cooperation. Since municipal boarders are converging less and less with the boarders inhabitants experience in their daily lives, municipalities feel free to cooperate in a variety of ways with other partners. This poses new challenges to democratic legitimacy, effectiveness and the role local authorities play. Local governments therefore do not need new regulations or legal forms of co-operations, but rather a repertoire fitting their role. We argue that local governments need to analyse their tasks, choose the form of cooperation that fits best and develop a repertoire for their cooperation. Light forms of cooperation are very important for developing a variety of cooperative forms and roles local governments need to play.