ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an empirically informed conceptual framework to evaluate issues of democracy with respect to metropolitan governance arrangements. It provides the brief discussion of theoretical propositions on how issues of democracy in the context of transitions from government to governance and the ways in which these theoretical propositions can orient research in the field of metropolitan governance. The chapter discusses these propositions in the light of empirical evidence drawn from an on-going research project on issues of metropolitan governance and democracy. It examines the links between policies made through mechanisms of metropolitan governance and traditional democratic procedures, as well as the emergence of new spaces of deliberation in the context of such governance mechanisms. The chapter discusses these theoretical arguments in the light of empirical evidence on mechanisms of metropolitan governance and argues that governance relativizes the weight of instances of democratically elected bodies in the policy process.
