The Coherence of Disorder: A Realist Approach to the Politics of City Regions

Abstract

Although study of political cooperation has yielded valuable insights about city region governance, this approach achieves less understanding of its actual practice. Viewing it mainly as a struggle to achieve political cooperation neglects how local governments sometimes find other ways of pulling together. A realist perspective uncovers how local governments pursue collective action despite limited political cooperation. Taking cues from theories of international politics, a framework for realist analysis of metropolitan areas is fashioned. It focuses on identifying processes of coordination and their political, economic and social structural linkages. This approach reveals enduring patterns of governance in support of de facto regional politics and policies. The framework is illustrated by the case of the New York tri-state region where a two-tier system of coordination having distinct policy biases is found in the region's fragmented politics. The usefulness of this framework for the comparative study of urban regional politics is suggested.