Does inter-municipal collaboration improve public service resilience? Evidence from local authorities in England

Abstract

Resilient organizations maintain functioning during times of unexpected adversity. Collaboration between organizations may enhance resilience by enabling scarce information, resources and capabilities to be leveraged across partners, although it may also impede rapid and flexible decision-making. We test this logic using the case of 'inter-municipal' collaboration in England, analysing how the first COVID-19 lockdown affected provision of Housing Benefit - a locally-administered social-security entitlement. Using OLS, probit, random-effects GLS and Hausman-Taylor estimations on time-series data from 187 lower-tier councils, we find that collaboration provided a degree of resilience, limiting the decline in accuracy objectives, but making no difference to service speed.