University of Konstanz
Faculty of Politics and Management

Winter Term 2002/2003

Metropolitan Governance
in Germany

Comparing the Regions of Stuttgart and Hannover

Seminar Paper for the Course
"Metropolitan Governance"

Author:

Frank Walter

Content

1 Introduction 

2 Literature Overview

3 Framework of Analysis
3.1 Theoretical Framework
3.2 Specification of Constructs
3.3 Operationalizations
3.3.1 Formal Strength
3.3.2 Overall Potential Power

4 Study Design
4.1 Methods
4.2 The Cases

5 Comparative Case Studies
5.1 Formal Strength
5.1.1 Legal Base 
5.1.2 Election Rule 
5.1.3 Decision-Making Rule 
5.1.4 Source of Finance 
5.1.5 Number of Tasks 
5.1.6 Binding Force
5.1.7 Summary 
5.2 Overall Potential Power 
5.2.1 De-facto Decision-Making 
.2.2 Share of Officials from other Political Levels 
5.2.3 Amount of Financial Resources 
5.2.4 Number of Staff
5.2.5 Distance to Center of Decision-Making 
5.2.6 Summary

6 Discussion and Conclusion

Abbreviations

References

1 Introduction

The issue of cooperation in metropolitan areas has long been on the agenda of both practitioners and theorists. For instance, Major Peters of Boston claimed in an address as early as 1919 that the lack of regional unity had severe adverse effects on his city in economic, social and political terms (Wallis 1994a: 160-161). On the core of this lies the notion that many problems in urban areas cross political and administrative boundaries, thus requiring regional solutions. Some examples for such problems are environmental pollution, traffic congestion, unemployment, poverty and ghetto-building (Hamilton 1999: 280-310; see also Heinz 2000a: 509-514). In practice, various attempts have been made to solve these problems, reaching from informal cooperations in limited issue areas to strong formal regional institutions with extensive competencies (Wallis 1994a, 1994b).

Among scholars, there is an ongoing debate about metropolitan cooperation which is in large parts concerned with the advantages and disadvantages of powerful regional institutions . This paper explores whether it makes sense at all to speak about the "power" of regional institutions. Even though such authorities have been considerably strengthened in legal terms in some cases, it is questionable whether this translates into increased actual power. After all, some scholars argue that state institutions in general do not have sufficient resources for policy-making in modern societies (Schneider 2000). This paper thus deals with the following question: Do attempts to legally strengthen regional institutions result in an overall increase of their power?

To answer this question, two regional institutions in Germany are examined in a comparative case study, namely the "Verband Region Stuttgart" (VRS) and the "Region Hannover" (RH). The analysis is based on indicators derived from the concept of power by Stokman (1995), who models an actor′s power as consisting of its voting power, resources and access to the decision-making center. It is shown that the RH is stronger than the VRS both in terms of legal strength and potential power. Legal strength of regional institutions indeed seems to translate into actual power. A possible explanation for this is found in the differing institutional surroundings of the two regional authorities.

The study is organized as follows: The next chapter presents a brief overview of different scholarly positions on metropolitan cooperation. In the third chapter, a theoretical framework for the study is developed and the concepts are operationalized. The fourth chapter comments on the methods, while the fifth presents the results of the empirical study. These results are discussed in the sixth chapter which also draws some general conclusions.

2 Literature Overview

An extensive review of the literature on metropolitan cooperation would be beyond the scope of this paper. So this chapter presents a brief overview of the most important arguments in this area.

A large part of the regionalism-literature focuses on the production and distribution of public services in metropolitan areas. For instance, so called reformists argue that large units of government are more efficient in these respects due to economies of scale and increased planning capabilities (Lefèvre 1998: 10). They thus advocate powerful metropolitan institutions in spite of fragmented local governments (e.g., Lightbody 1998; Lowery 2000; Priebs 1999).

This position is strongly resisted by public-choice theorists. They argue that competition is the driving force in producing public services efficiently. In a competitive environment, municipalities will be kept from behaving inefficiently, since this would result in rising costs and taxes, reducing the municipality’s attractiveness for businesses and affluent households (Wallis 1994a: 164-165). In areas with a single unit of government, competition is assumed to be limited because residents cannot “vote with their feet” (Lefèvre 1998: 11), i.e. they cannot move to another community in the same region if they are not satisfied with the public services in their municipality. So for public-choice theorists, competition arising from fragmented political landscapes is a precondition for efficient policies. They thus advocate polycentric forms of regional government (e.g., Ostrom et al. 1961). Other authors supporting fragmentation argue that smaller communities are preferable in terms of democracy since they stimulate higher civic involvement (Oliver 2000), while again others challenge the assumption that suburbs exploit their central cities, thus arguing that there is no reason for metropolitan unification (Hawkins/Ihrke 1999).

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