Interlocal Relations
The American governmental system is extremely fragmented, with more than 87,000 units of local government including about 51,155 special districts, 19,429 cities, 16,504 townships, 13,506 school districts, and 3,034 counties. Interlocal relations include city-city, county-county, and city-county relationships, as well as relations between cities or counties and special local districts such as for schools, fire departments, water and sewer services, and economic development. Interlocal relations are studied in both their competitive nature and their cooperative nature.
A recurring theme in interlocal relations, dating to the reform movements of the early twentieth century, is city-city and city-county consolidation. Thurmaier and Wood (2002) frame cooperative relationships between local units of government in terms of four levels of interlocal agreement (communication, coordination, cooperation, and consolidation) and the type of substantive policy or service area. Wood uses a typology of service delivery arrangements that include joint initiatives, contracts, transfer of services (functional consolidation), city-county consolidation, and partnerships with regional institutions such as a council of government (2001).
Interlocal relations in the United States have largely been studied in the context of metropolitan governance. There are 324 metropolitan areas in the United States as defined by the U.S. Bureau of the Census. More than eight out of ten Americans live in one of the metropolitan areas, and nearly half live in the twenty-five largest regions. Wikstrom notes that “the average metro area contains about 100 local governments, including 40 special districts, 24 municipalities, 19 independent school districts, 16 townships, and two counties.” As such, how metropolitan areas are governed is extremely important to citizens living in those regions.
Peirce, Johnson, and Hall (1993) describe the modern city-state as a closely interrelated geographic, economic, and environmental entity that defines modern civilization. They postulate that for the American city-state to survive and prosper in today’s global economy, city-states must overcome urban sprawl and the deep socioeconomic gulf between poor cities and wealthy suburbs by creating effective systems of coordinated governance.
Frederickson contends the new global economy and revolution in telecommunications have altered the meaning of physical space and the importance of boundaries. The disarticulation of the state includes the declining salience of jurisdictions; the fuzziness of borders; the inability of the fragmented jurisdiction to contain and manage complex social, economic, and political issues; and the asymmetry between the governed and those who govern. Overcoming the disarticulation of the state requires local officials to practice metropolitan governance through intergovernmental communication, coordination, cooperation, and consolidation of services.
Frederickson’s theory of administrative conjunction posits that intergovernmental partnerships and social networks are driven primarily by professional staff who are more inclined to think and act regionally and to build “epistemic communities” than elected officials who are more focused on electoral matters that are jurisdictional and local in nature and scope.
Savitch and Vogel (1996) analyzed patterns of intergovernmental relations in several regions (Los Angeles; New York City; Washington, D.C.; St. Louis; and Pittsburgh), and classified metropolitan governance as mutual adjustment (direct or indirect cooperation and coordination), conflict, or avoidance. Each region adopts patterns of governance that reflect their history and unique issues and problems. Using the typology, Wood found that the dominant metropolitan governance pattern in the Kansas City region was mutual adjustment. Eliciting cooperation is a slow process.
Many studies have demonstrated that cities frequently participate in intergovernmental service delivery arrangements. Pagano and others have found that intergovernmental partnerships have become the structure of choice for many jurisdictions in the delivery of urban services. Intergovernmental arrangements may be preferable to public-private partnerships in that governments share common goals and values that result in more trust, fewer agency problems, and less transaction costs.
Many scholars have found that city governments enter into intergovernmental service delivery arrangements in order to enhance economies of scale, reduce costs, improve service quality, equalize service levels, and solve common problems.
The increasing interdependence of jurisdictions, the transcendence of regional economies, and the disarticulation of the state foster the incentive and need for cooperation and coordination among local governments to finance and deliver urban services. As a result, according to Wikstrom, local governments enter into governance networks that create a spiderweb of complex relationships that are superimposed upon existing institutions. These governance networks are generally able to overcome the disarticulation of the state and reduce fiscal stress. However, metropolitan governance is not a panacea. There is little evidence that metropolitan governance is capable of overcoming fiscal disparities found between jurisdictions, solving fundamental metropolitan problems, or controlling urban sprawl. Achieving these objectives will require more intergovernmental cooperation, stronger regional institutions, and a closer partnership between local jurisdictions, states, and the federal government.
| BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Robert Agranoff and Michael McGuire, Collaborative Public Management: New Strategies for Local Government (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2003); Jered Carr and Richard Feiock, City-County Consolidation and Its Alternatives (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2004); Suzanne Leland and Kurt Thurmaier, Case Studies of City-County Consolidation: The Changing Local Landscape (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2004); Myron Orfield, American Metro Politics: The New Suburban Reality (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2002); Neal R. Peirce with Curtis W. Johnson and John Stuart Hall, Citistates: How Urban America Can Prosper in a Competitive World (Washington, DC: Seven Locks Press, 1993); G. Ross Stephens and Nelson Wikstrom, Metropolitan Government and Governance: Theoretical Perspectives, Empirical Analysis, and the Future (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); H. V. Savitch and Ronald K. Vogel, eds., Regional Politics: America in a Post-City Age (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1996); and Kurt Thurmaier and Curtis Wood, “Interlocal Agreements as Overlapping Social Networks: Picket-Fence Regionalism in Metropolitan Kansas City,” Public Administration Review 62, no. 5 (2002): 585–98; and Curtis Wood, “Consolidated versus Fragmented Government: A Study of the Metropolitan Kansas City Region,” 33rd Annual Conference of the Mid-Continental Regional Science Association, May 2002. |
Curtis H. Wood and Kurt Thurmaier
SEE ALSO: Intergovernmental Relations; Local Government; Special Districts