The JTE is usually associated with degeneracies that are well localised in space, like those occurring in a small molecule or associated to an isolated transition metal complex. However, in many periodic high-symmetry solid-state systems, like perovskites, some crystalline sites allow for electronic degeneracy giving rise under adequate compositions to lattices of JT-active centers. This can produce a cooperative JTE, where global distortions of the crystal occur due to local degeneracies.
In order to determine the final electronic and geometric structure of a cooperative JT system, it is necessary to take into account both the local distortions and the interaction between the different sites, which will take such form necessary to minimise the global energy of the crystal.
While works on the cooperative JTE started in the late fifties, it was in 1960 that Kanamori published the first work on the cooperative JTE where many important elements present in the modern theory for this effect were introduced.  This included the use of pseudospin notation to discuss orbital ordering, and discussions of the importance of the JTE to discuss magnetism, the competition of this effect with the spin–orbit coupling and the coupling of the distortions with the strain of the lattice. This point was later stressed in the review by Gehring and Gehring as being the key element to establish long-range order between the distortions in the lattice. An important part of the modern theory of the cooperative JTE, can lead to structural phase transitions.
It is important to note that many cooperative JT systems would be expected to be metals from band theory as, to produce them, a degenerate orbital has to be partially filled and the associated band would be metallic. However, under the perturbation of the symmetry-breaking distortion associated to the cooperative JTE, the degeneracies in the electronic structure are destroyed and the ground state of these systems is often found to be insulating (see e.g.). In many important cases like the parent compound for colossal magnetoresistance perovskites, LaMnO, an increase of temperature leads to disorder in the distortions which lowers the band splitting due to the cooperative JTE, thus triggering a metal–insulator transition.