by Karina Arias-Yurisch, Karina Retamal-Soto, Camila Ramos-Fuenzalida, & Alejandro Espinosa-Rada
Metropolitan regions present significant governance challenges, particularly due to their institutional fragmentation. We aim to contribute to the metropolitan governance literature by examining how local governments in Chile participate in various policy venues, both mandated and self-organized. We examine how the institutional attributes of these venues influence the formation of inter-municipal governance structures, using the Ecology of Games Framework (EGF) as our analytical lens.
The Santiago Metropolitan Region, with a population exceeding 8 million, is divided into 52 local government units (municipalities), each responsible for addressing policy issues that span the region. Despite multiple efforts to reform governance in Santiago, the city has never been organized under a consolidated metropolitan authority, resulting in a polycentric system where multiple decisional spaces coexist. This fragmentation makes cooperation between municipalities essential for addressing collective problems, yet it also complicates the formation of coherent governance structures.
The EGF provides a theoretical approach for analyzing polycentric systems, like Santiago, where multiple institutions interact and influence decision-making. By focusing on how various policy venues—each governed by different institutional rules—interrelate, we can better understand how decisions made in one venue affect others. Our research seeks to explore these interdependencies by examining participation in mandated provincial forums, voluntary municipal associations, and inter-municipal agreements in Santiago.
Using data from formal inter-municipal agreements made between 2017 and 2021, we applied Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGMs) to test the following two hypotheses. Further, we analyze the formation of inter-municipal governance structures.
Hypothesis 1: Sharing participation in a mandated, centralized venue will positively affect the formation of inter-municipal agreements, supporting an expansive effect on Santiago’s governance.
Hypothesis 2: Sharing participation in a self-organized venue will negatively affect the formation of inter-municipal agreements, supporting a restrictive effect on Santiago’s governance.
Our results strongly supported Hypothesis 1. We found that participation in mandated provincial forums positively influences the formation of inter-municipal agreements, suggesting that centralized policy venues encourage further collaboration between local governments. In contrast, Hypothesis 2 was not supported by the data—participation in self-organized municipal associations did not significantly limit the formation of new inter-municipal agreements.
This finding highlights the importance of institutional attributes in shaping governance outcomes. Mandated venues, which are structured by higher levels of government, provide fewer opportunities for municipalities to set their own agendas, prompting local actors to seek additional venues for collaboration. Meanwhile, self-organized venues, where municipalities have greater control, do not appear to overwhelm local governments’ capacity for further cooperation.
Our study contributes to the ongoing debate on metropolitan governance by demonstrating the critical role that institutional attributes play in shaping inter-municipal collaboration. The findings suggest that in a polycentric system like Santiago’s, participation in mandated forums fosters further governance formation, while self-organized efforts do not hinder additional collaboration. This research offers a framework for future studies examining the relationship between institutional complexity and governance outcomes in other metropolitan contexts.
You can read the original article in Policy Studies Journal at
Arias-Yurisch, Karina, Karina Retamal-Soto, Camila Ramos-Fuenzalida and Alejandro Espinosa-Rada. 2024. “ Participation in Multiple Policy Venues in Governance of Chile’s Santiago Metropolitan Region: When Institutional Attributes Can Make the Difference.” Policy Studies Journal 52 (3): 583–602. https://doi.org/10.1111/psj.12527.
About the Authors
Karina Arias-Yurisch is an associated professor in the Department of Public Management and Policy at the Faculty of Administration and Economics in the University of Santiago, Chile. Her research focuses on local and regional governance, inter-municipal cooperation and network analysis.
Karina Retamal-Soto is a professor in the Department of Politics and Government at the Faculty of Social Sciences in the Alberto Hurtado University, Chile. Her research focuses on regional governance, inter-municipal cooperation and institutions in complex polycentric systems.
Camila Ramos-Fuenzalida is a doctoral student at the Institute of Local Government Studies at the University of Birmingham. Her research focused on local government dynamics, inter-municipal collaboration, governance networks, and emergency management networks.
Alejandro Espinosa-Rada is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the Social Networks Lab at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Switzerland. His main areas of interest are small groups dynamics, sociology of social networks, sociology of science and knowledge and science of science.
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