ABSTRACT
Sometimes the most important effects are as a result of forces that are difficult to observe. Institutions and opportunities provide concrete frameworks within which local authorities operate and condition their responses to regional issues. But actions are not determined by these tangible forces alone. Individual experiences, cultures, traditions, and social structures act almost invisibly on decision-making processes and in ways that can sometimes even defy the expectations set by more easily observed factors. These forces can be difficult to measure, yet they have spawned a range of alternative approaches to explaining political variations that can be more powerful than structural perspectives. These approaches have emerged to fill the gaps left by approaches that rely primarily on institutions, opportunities, or costs – such as those discussed in the previous chapter – to account for the fact that regions with similar institutional structures often pursue different strategies for development or enjoy different degrees of success in establishing metropolitan cooperation. I argue that these less tangible factors should be considered, alongside institutions and opportunities, in investigating the dynamics of intermunicipal cooperation. Consequently, the theoretical framework of metropolitan cooperation developed here adopts the concept of regional networks, an element of civic capital to provide explanatory vigour and to address the theoretical limitations of institutions and opportunities.
