Understanding Local Government Cooperation in Urban Regions

This article examines the debate over metropolitan governmental form and the applicability of the reform-consolidation and market-public choice models to understanding the reality of how interlocal governmental relations operate in urban regions. These form-based models are found to be deficient as useful and inductively empirical paradigms for examining the day-to-day interplay of interlocal relations. The author presents an alternative model that posits that urban political and organizational cultures and their influence on the roles and behavior of local officials, especially administrators, may be more driving explanatory factors in interlocal relations than governmental form.