Exploring the creation of the metropolitan city-region government: the cases of England, France and Italy

ABSTRACT

Over the past decade, several European countries have undergone reforms that modified the distribution of allocated powers and/or the geographical area of intervention of local authorities. This paper focuses on the institution of metropolitan governments. National legislative and executive powers usually claim that they want to provide densely urbanized areas with a more integrative level of action. As a result, the public authorities in large cities would get a greater capacity to deal with issues such as economic growth, increased soil sealing, socio-spatial inequalities, etc. This paper explores the motivations and forms of such metropolitan reforms in three European countries within the last decade, with the creation of Combined Authorities in England, of métropoles in France and of citta metropolitane in Italy. We argue that the forms of metropolitan government that have emerged in the three countries are embedded in very different institutional systems (Section 2). Considering the strategies of key protagonists, we show that the new modes of governance differ across and sometimes within countries (Section 3). In particular, the spatiality and the autonomy of the new metropolitan governments vary in the three countries (Section 4).

KEYWORDS:

• Metropolitan government
• decentralization
• new public management
• England
• France
• Italy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In Italy, the number of metropolitan citta has been stable since their creation in 2014. For England, the number of Combined Authorities taken into account in this article is those which were established by July 2017. For France, we have taken into account here only the 15 métropoles resulting from the loi de modernisation de l'action publique territoriale et d'affirmation des métropoles (MAPTAM – law of modernization of the territorial public action and the affirmation of metropolises) of 2014, leaving aside those that were created in 2017. Indeed, the aim is not to conduct an exhaustive analysis of metropolitan areas, but to compare the national determinants of the creation of these new levels of government.

2 In 2012, 82% of deputies of the assemblée nationale and 77% of senators held at least one other elected office. The proportion of parliamentarians at the head of a local executive (mayor or chairman of a département or regional council) was 45% for the deputies and 48% for senators. These figures make France an exception in Europe. In Italy, 16% of parliamentarians hold at least one other elected office, 13% in Great Britain and 10% in Germany (Dolez 2015). However, in January 2014, under the pressure of the national government, the French parliament adopted a law prohibiting the combination of local executive functions with a deputy or senator's post. This law came into force on March 31, 2017.

3 We excluded Paris and Roma rom this calculation since London, having a different and older form of government than the Combined Authority, is not considered in this paper.

4 Local enterprise partnerships (LEPs) are voluntary partnerships between local authorities and businesses, set up in 2011 by the national government to help determine local economic priorities and lead economic growth and job creation within the local area.

5 Besides the ‘metropolitan mayor’ the governmental of the citta metropolitana is supported by a metropolitan council and a metropolitan conference. The council is composed of a certain number of elected representatives (between 14 and 24), chosen among the mayors and local councillors. This council supports the metropolitan mayor in the budget, planning and regulatory decision-making. The metropolitan conference comprises the mayors of all the municipalities and functions roughly like a parliament, deliberating policy and government proposals presented by the mayor and metropolitan council. It may also propose its own political initiatives.