Institutional preconditions for the collective capacity to act in urban areas: a QCA of seventeen European case studies

Abstract

The present article questions the institutional preconditions for solving problems of interdependency in urban areas. Policy coordination in terms of processes as well as outcomes serves as an indicator for the collective capacity to act. Hypotheses are derived from two institutionalist schools: first, from the neoprogressive model that stands for direct public service provision by centralized and professionalised bureaucracies within consolidated municipalities, and second, from the public choice model that represents a decentralized, non-professional, and politically dependent administration in fragmented urban areas. The results of the comparison of seventeen case studies regarding the integration of urban transport and land use policies in Western European urban areas employing Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) show that well co-ordinated policy decisions are only implemented in institutional settings that largely correspond to the neoprogressive model.