In search of cohesive metropolitan governance: enticements and obligations

ABSTRACT

Exploring some critical ‘big’ and ‘bigger’ questions facing the governance of metropolitan regions, we theorize how non-state actors, such as, business organizations, entice local governments to participate in metropolitan planning – an exercise which would then require the adherence of local governments to framework obligations defined by the state. Through the empirical case of the Ruhr metropolitan area of Germany, we demonstrate that such a combination of enticement and process management (floating obligation) can help to engender ‘cohesive’ metropolitan governance in terms of conflict settlement in the selection of a limited set of priorities – an outcome which we then critically analyse in the wider context of ‘good’ metropolitan governance.

KEYWORDS:

• Cohesive metropolitan governance
• meta-governance
• enticement
• floating obligation
• the Ruhr
• good governance

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was presented at, and won the ‘Best Paper Award’ of, the 42nd Annual Conference of ANZRSAI, ANU, Canberra, 5–7 December 2018. We would like to express our special thanks to the Conference organizers, referees and audience, as well as the Editor and anonymous reviewers of European Planning Studies for their effective communication and valuable inputs. We would also like to thank Prof. Dr Thorsten Wiechmann and Mr Dennis Hardt of TU Dortmund for their insightful comments and data collection contributions, respectively. Proof-reading assistance by Ms. Elahehsadat Esmaeili, Planning student at Yazd University, is appreciated.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 VEBA became a part of E.ON in 2000.

Additional information

Funding

This research was carried out under a grant [40.16.0.010PO] from the Fritz Thyssen Foundation for which the authors would like to express their gratitude.