LIST OF PANELS

Several institutional reforms around the world have built new metropolitan governments in the past decades (Brenner, 2004). Those metropolitan governments have various shapes according to national, cultural, political, institutional backgrounds. Despite these differences, there are three dominant models of metropolitan government: the reform school, the public choice school and the new regionalism. In fact, we have moved from theories advocating cooperation between main cities and their peripheries, to a reformist movement that defends competition between municipalities and efficiency that better pull them up (Tomàs, 2013). And finally the third theory considers as ineluctable "the creation of large polycentric urban areas with high mobility of citizens and products, or post metropolis" (Soya, 2000). This theory based on an intermediate principle between the reformists and the public choice theory, proposes to go beyond the institutional aspect (Douay, 2010) by focusing on the role of actors’ networks that participate in “regional coalitions” (Mitchell-Weaver & Al, 2000).

Considering, as Lefèvre argues, that political actors can play an active role in metropolitan governance to find solutions to local economical, social, political, and environmental issues (Lefèvre, 1998). This panel tends to explore the impact of politics on two aspects of metropolitan governments : the institutional construction (of a public policies' space) and the link between planning or transport policies through urban projects (more coordination between various actors without institutional reform) and institutional policies oriented towards bigger simplification, better coordination of private and public actors involved in metropolitan governance.

Yet few insight has been put on the actors promoting metropolitan reform (may it be towards more coordinative or more integrative processes). As a result, observing the process at work upstream will enlighten on how reforms are built. If central States are acknowledged as playing key roles in the implementation and success of metropolitan reforms (Kübler & Lefèvre, 2017), few is known about what is behind the generic term of « State » : who are the ministers, the high civil servants, the experts promoting such reforms ? To what extent do local representatives favor metropolitan reforms? And what about civil participation: is there a demand in the urban population for metropolitan reforms? How international organizations such as the World Bank, OECD, UNHabitat, the European Union, play an active role in promoting metropolitan rescaling?

Then, which policy instruments are chosen by reformers to promote their vision of the metropolis? Do they use expertise, communication, law…?

Those questions raise a second point of investigation on metropolitan institutional policies.  Which are the narratives and the visions justifying such reforms? Are they linked to electoral, regulative  or democratic purposes? This second axis of the panel focus on the role of ideas in shaping public policies.

Third, how are metropolitan institutional reforms implemented? What about processes of reforms? Do they follow and precede coordinative processes of planning projects?

Forth, it seems interesting to question the mechanisms leading to failures of certain public policy. What alternatives do actors have to go beyond the metropolitan institution? How other cooperations are structured around metropolitan areas?

Communications addressing the above mentioned issues in monographies or comparative fields are welcome. We put on interest in the different stages of institutionalization through long-lasting, new or under-construction cases.