Intercity consortia may be seen as a federative political arena of horizontal cooperation, focused toward the shared production of policy decisions. In last twenty years, they have received growthing appreciation in context of a more active role for the municipalities on providing social services and policy-making. Furthermore, those arrangements become stronger as a management tool to solve problems of interdependence between the cities and when the regionalized activity enables better coordination of activities among the federal entities. The paper analysis two inter-municipal consortia in the State of Rio de Janeiro, Consórcio Intermunicipal de Saúde da Baixada Fluminense (CISBAF), that involves health policies, and Consórcio Intermunicipal Lagos São João (CILSJ), for environmental and water management. The analytical methodology was constructed based on institutional autonomy, presence of mechanisms of democratic control and maintenance of internal cohesion. The results indicates that the two cases are consistency experiences and identify some differences between their institutional patterns, which are explained by (i) the strategy of coordination and authority transfer over the policy-decision-making and policy-making, (ii) the path features in each case, and (iii) the mechanism used to keep the municipalities linked in the institucionalized decision proccess of the consortium.