Metropolitan Governance
Chapter 7 focuses on the problems of metropolitan governance, one of the first domains in which the polycentrism theoretical lenses were applied. The example of the police services is used as an overture, as the chapter revisits the field and the literature fifty years after the Ostroms engaged in the “metropolitan reform debate” and launched their program. From a normative standpoint, the underlying thesis is that, even when government is involved in the production of public services, the most efficient form of organization is not hierarchical but polycentric. The chapter uses the example of police services to illustrate. This is also one of the first domains in which the polycentrism theoretical lens was applied. The chapter elaborates this approach and presents new insights. The public choice institutionalist, polycentricity-based perspective gets thus to be applied, illustrated, and expounded at a concrete, applied level.