Democratic metropolitan governance: experiences in five German metropolitan regions

Abstract

The paper seeks to describe whether reflections about the legitimacy metropolitan governance arrangements found consideration in metropolitan reforms in five German metropolitan regions. Metropolitan regions are an increasingly relevant scale for political decision-making but mechanism for legitimacy and accountability did not keep pace. Given the fact that in most metropolitan institutions only indirect mechanisms of legitimacy such as regional assemblies with representatives from municipal councils or public-private governing boards are at work, one may expect that output legitimacy or legitimacy by performance is the dominant source for legitimacy in metropolitan governance. In fact, citizens care much about the quality and the prize of services such as waste management or public transport but less about the transparency of decision-making procedures behind these services -at least on the scale of the region. The results show a mixed picture. In two out of five regions, directly elected regional assembly have been established and now constitute genuine tiers of metropolitan politics where input and output legitimacy are combined. In other regions, the turn to flexible forms of governance opened up decision-making arenas for societal actors, but it seems that this opening of the policy process is very selective and comes at the expense of citizen participation.

Local government co-ordination: metropolitan governance in twenty-first century Australia

“…One of the main reasons for establishing metropolitan institutions is potential efficiency gains, through providing joint services, utilising economies of scale, and avoiding wasteful competition. This particularly applies to services where economies of scale can be achieved, uncoordinated policies produce high costs and that have a 'naturally' regional characteristic, such as sewage disposal, waste management, transport and land use planning, and environmental policies (Zimmermann 2014;Cheyne 2018). This purpose is consistent with the broader efficiency agenda that has guided local government reform in Australia over several decades, and the disputed claims of savings through scale (Roesel 2017;Tran, Kortt et al 2019).…”

“…Metropolitan network governance structures do this to a lesser extent, often still including several players in different topics. However, they can reduce complexity by having specific authorities or networks for specified topics (Zimmermann 2014). Both forms attempt to counteract existing complex structures of 'uncoordinated' arrangements consisting of public as well as non-public actors that have developed from years of ad hoc administrative reforms (Boschken 2017).…”

Re-Scaling of Metropolitan Governance in Germany

“…Notwithstanding the volatility of the last century, a stable pattern for metropolitan governance then emerged in the Ruhr area and elsewhere in Germany. The creation of inter-municipal associations (kommunale Zweckverbände or Regionalverbände) is still the instrument most frequently used for the organization of public services and planning functions in metropolitan areas (Fürst/Klinger/Knieling et al 1990;Zimmermann 2014). As will be shown in the remainder of this article, metropolitan governance in Germany is less prone to dynamic changes than in many other countries, as illustrated by the recent discussions and legal reforms seen in Italy, the UK, Poland and France, where new layers of metropolitan policymaking and planning have been created by nationwide laws (see Shaw/Tewdwr-Jones (2017), Geppert (2017), Fedeli (2017), Krukowska/Lackowska (2017); in this issue).…”

“…The disadvantage of this absence of nationally coordinated metropolitan policies may be seen in the fact that institutional misfit, lack of cooperation or fragmentation can be observed in the majority of German metropolitan regions (Hoyler/Freytag/Mager 2006;Heinelt/Razin/Zimmermann 2011), which may result in problems of democratic legitimacy (Zimmermann 2014). Comprehensive solutions have only been found in a few regions such as Hanover and Stuttgart while others, such as the Ruhr (or Rhine-Ruhr), demonstrate more incremental progress.…”

Rescaling of Metropolitan Governance and Spatial Planning in Europe: an Introduction to the Special Issue

“…A critical appraisal is required which not only focuses on criteria of performance and efficiency (output legitimacy), but also on criteria of democracy, transparency (input and through-put legitimacy), social justice and social cohesion (Young 2000: 196 ff. ;Zimmermann 2014).…”