Metropolitan Government vs. Metropolitan Governance

Perhaps it is the Midwestern American in me but I can see both the supposed benefits of metropolitan government and metropolitan governance alike. I agree with Oakerson wholeheartedly that above a certain number in population the representational ability of elected officials is seriously diminished – he quotes Dahl that this number is somewhere between 20,000 and 50,000. On the other hand I think his argument that small homogeneous cities are less adversarial assumes is fatally simplistic if not overtly wrong (besides maybe being racist). Different cities in regions have different social, political, and economic needs, something as simple as their inherent geography relative to the region as a whole would make them more heterogeneous than Oakerson would like to admit. In the end I think Oakerson’s argument for something like the status quo leaves much to be desired while advocates for metropolitan government miss some of the inefficiencies and deficiencies that would make a metropolitan government less advantageous than they would like to imagine.

What most intrigued me is Studenski’s idea of the ‘federated city’. While the bi-lateral agreements that cities share constitute some form of federation these agreements are not nearly comprehensive enough to constitute a true federation. Why is this? If 27 nations in the European Union can come together to form a functional federation what is stopping a group of cities of forming a union? Some of the roadblocks preventing city federations are obvious: revenue sharing will always be contentious, perceived loss of power to the federation will always have to be minimized, and voting schemes that balance the representation issue that Zimmerman raises: one citizen – one vote vs. one municipality – one vote. Furthermore the continued existence of local municipalities in a federated system, in contrast to a true metropolitan government, maintains their ability to represent their citizens. Obviously the state would have to enable legislation allowing cities to federate in some way – although I’m not familiar enough with the legal details of existing governmental structures that states have enabled to say whether new legislation would have to be passed.