Regional governance and institutional collective action

Abstract

Chapter 24: This chapter brings together scholarship from two distinct theoretical traditions to investigate how policy decisions are integrated and coordinated across multiple scales in urban metropolitan regions. The first school of thought focuses on formal regional intergovernmental organizations (RIGOs) and formal mechanisms for regional coordination. The second school, Institutional Collective Action (ICA) theory, focuses on self-organizing forms of coordination and cooperation among local governments within urban regions. By integrating a richer perspective on formal intergovernmental institutions within the ICA approach we offer a broader explanation of how policies coordinated across local jurisdictional boundaries in metropolitan regions can be applied across contexts, countries and cultures. Building on the intellectual foundations of the classic collective action and polycentricity literatures, we advance understanding on how fragmented governments form collaborative relationships to address regional issues that go beyond individual jurisdictions. Regions are constructed as nested systems of local governments within regional organizations, associations or government entities. Integration can occur through three mechanisms: agreements among individual local governments for which regional organizations provide the venue within with individual local governments collaborate; individual local governments operate as the governing body for the regional governance entity through collective action and collective decision making; multiple regional governance entities.