From Competition to Collaboration: Intergovernmental Economic Development Policy Networks

Abstract

This study investigates the strategic collaboration among local jurisdictions in the competitive environment: how fragmented jurisdictions in a metropolitan area perceive each other as cooperative partners and what factors influence the establishment of collaborative relationships between them. To answer the research questions, we applied the Institutional Collective Action (ICA) framework, which assumes that institutional actors behave in ways such that their economic benefits are maximised and risks and costs of collaboration are minimised, and employed the exponential random graph (ERG) model, one of the statistical social network analyses. The results indicate that the physical, political and geographical similarities among municipalities positively influence collaboration among local jurisdictions. In addition, municipalities are more likely to prefer to establish the closed network relationship such as triad–triplet. This study allows to understand the mechanism to establish collaborative behaviour among local jurisdictions for their regional economic development in a metropolitan area.