Metropolitan Institutions and Policy Coordination: The Integration of Land Use and Transport Policies in Swiss Urban Areas

Abstract

The article addresses the question of how different metropolitan institutional settings affect the quality of political negotiation processes and their subsequent policy decisions. Starting from the theoretical controversy of the two metropolitan reform traditions, two opposing ideal types of metropolitan government institutions are conceptualized: on the one hand the public choice model that stands for a decentralized, nonprofessional, and politically dependent administration in fragmented urban areas, and on the other hand the neoprogressive model that stands for direct public service production by centralized and professionalized bureaucracies within consolidated municipalities. A qualitative comparative analysis of nine decision cases in four Swiss urban areas uncovers three main results: voluntary, positive, and policy‐driven coordination as well as well coordinated policy solutions are found in centralized rather than decentralized institutional settings, in fragmented rather than consolidated metropolitan areas, and in project structures with a strict separation of the political sphere of negotiating from the technical sphere rather than in negotiations without such clear distinction. However, it is only under very specific institutional conditions that these well‐coordinated solutions are also being implemented. The findings must be put into perspective in two respects. On the one hand, the positive effect of fragmentation on the quality of deliberation is supposedly unique to Switzerland due to its very strong federalism. On the other hand, the importance of bureaucratic autonomy is probably due to Switzerland's marked tradition of a weak state. The results from the nine test cases in general, however, substantiate the hypotheses derived from the neoprogressive model of metropolitan government institutions rather than the public choice model.