The Social Structure of Interlocal Cooperation in Metropolitan Areas.

This paper reviews the literature on local government cooperation and finds an over-reliance on environmentally imposed incentives and constraints as explanatory factors. By contrast, there is insufficient treatment of the actions, interactions, and reactions exhibited by the actors who govern local institutions. By conceptualizing local government actors as embedded in a larger social structure, it is possible to see the ways in which these actors, as parts of a whole, might interact to achieve regional objectives. This paper examines the metropolitan social structure of institutional actors, along with the social psychology of organizing, and proposes some specific avenues to a better understanding of how and why cooperation occurs in metropolitan areas. Rather than assume the fortunes of local governments are solely dependent on external initiatives, this view holds that actors help to create the metropolitan environment of which they are a part. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]