Metropolitan Governance in the Federalist Americas: Strategies for Equitable and Integrated Development, edited by Peter K. Spink, Peter M. Ward, and Robert H. Wilson.

Abstract

This book takes on the ambitious task of examining what the authors call the “effectiveness of governance systems” in the large metropolitan areas of the federalist Americas: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, the United States, and Venezuela. Although sharing federal constitutions, the nature of federalism differs significantly in these countries, as the authors acknowledge. Canada, the United States, and Brazil offer more decentralized systems, whereas Mexico, Argentina, and Venezuela have more centralized features. These features provide for interesting comparisons as the authors examine metropolitan government and governance features in each. The central question being pursued, as the authors state it, is whether “current and emerging initiatives and structures of governance are capable of meeting the challenges of collective life in these large and complex metropolitan areas” (p. 3) as represented by the countries studied. An examination of metropolitan governance and its effectiveness in federal systems is particularly relevant, the authors argue, because in federal systems lower levels of government typically have more constitutional autonomy than in unitary systems. It is in federal systems, consequently, that subnational governments may engage more formally and more readily in intergovernmental collaborative relationships and where such arrangements may be created offering viable and effective governance opportunities. Key to their analysis is the extent of democratization (citizen involvement) and decentralization (governance capacity) found to exist among the metropolitan areas included in their study. And, as the authors put it, their concern is not only with how citizens are engaged in the governance process, but whether such processes are actually improving the lives of citizens. Thus, their central research questions becomes, “whether the current and emerging initiatives and structures of governance are capable of meeting the challenges of collective life in these large and complex metropolitan areas” (p. 34).