Publication: Managing the Coordination of Service Delivery in Metropolitan Cities : The Role of Metropolitan Governance
Loading...
Date
2007-08
ISSN
Published
2007-08
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
This paper examines different models of governing structure found in metropolitan areas around the world. It evaluates how well these models achieve the coordination of service delivery over the entire metropolitan area as well as the extent to which they result in the equitable sharing of costs of services. Based on theory and case studies from numerous cities in developed and less developed countries, the paper concludes that there is no "one size fits all" model of metropolitan governance. Other observations from the case studies highlight the importance of the process of implementing a metropolitan structure, the need to match fiscal resources with expenditure responsibilities, the need to have a governance structure that covers the entire economic region, and the critical importance of having a strong regional structure that ensures that services are delivered in a coordinated fashion across municipal boundaries.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Slack, Enid. 2007. Managing the Coordination of Service Delivery in Metropolitan Cities : The Role of Metropolitan Governance. Policy Research Working Paper; No. 4317. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/7264 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Publication The Asymmetric Bank Distress Amplifier of Recessions(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-07-11)One defining feature of financial crises, evident in U.S. and international data, is asymmetric bank distress—concentrated losses on a subset of banks. This paper proposes a model in which shocks to borrowers’ productivity dispersion lead to asymmetric bank losses. The framework exhibits a “bank distress amplifier,” exacerbating economic downturns by causing costly bank failures and raising uncertainty about the solvency of banks, thereby pushing banks to deleverage. Quantitative analysis shows that the bank distress amplifier doubles investment decline and increases the spread by 2.5 times during the Great Recession compared to a standard financial accelerator model. The mechanism helps explain how a seemingly small shock can sometimes trigger a large crisis.Publication From Tailwinds to Headwinds(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-07-10)The first quarter of the twenty-first century has been transformative for emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs). These economies now account for about 45 percent of global GDP, up from about 25 percent in 2000, a trend driven by robust collective growth in the three largest EMDEs—China, India, and Brazil (the EM3). Collectively, EMDEs have contributed about 60 percent of annual global growth since 2000, on average, double the share during the 1990s. Their ascendance was powered by swift global trade and financial integration, especially during the first decade of the century. Interdependence among these economies has also increased markedly. Today, nearly half of goods exports from EMDEs go to other EMDEs, compared to one-quarter in 2000. As cross-border linkages have strengthened, business cycles among EMDEs and between EMDEs and advanced economies have become more synchronized, and a distinct EMDE business cycle has emerged. Cross-border business cycle spillovers from the EM3 to other EMDEs are sizable, at about half of the magnitude of spillovers from the largest advanced economies (the United States, the euro area, and Japan). Yet EMDEs confront a host of headwinds at the turn of the second quarter of the century. Progress implementing structural reforms in many of these economies has stalled. Globally, protectionist measures and geopolitical fragmentation have risen sharply. High debt burdens, demographic shifts, and the rising costs of climate change weigh on economic prospects. A successful policy approach to accelerate growth and development should focus on boosting investment and productivity, navigating a difficult external environment, and enhancing macroeconomic stability.Publication Intergenerational Income Mobility around the World(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-07-09)This paper introduces a new global database with estimates of intergenerational income mobility for 87 countries, covering 84 percent of the world’s population. This marks a notable expansion of the cross-country evidence base on income mobility, particularly among low- and middle-income countries. The estimates indicate that the negative association between income mobility and inequality (known as the Great Gatsby Curve) continues to hold across this wider range of countries. The database also reveals a positive association between income mobility and national income per capita, suggesting that countries achieve higher levels of intergenerational mobility as they grow richer.Publication The Macroeconomic Implications of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Options(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-29)Estimating the macroeconomic implications of climate change impacts and adaptation options is a topic of intense research. This paper presents a framework in the World Bank's macrostructural model to assess climate-related damages. This approach has been used in many Country Climate and Development Reports, a World Bank diagnostic that identifies priorities to ensure continued development in spite of climate change and climate policy objectives. The methodology captures a set of impact channels through which climate change affects the economy by (1) connecting a set of biophysical models to the macroeconomic model and (2) exploring a set of development and climate scenarios. The paper summarizes the results for five countries, highlighting the sources and magnitudes of their vulnerability --- with estimated gross domestic product losses in 2050 exceeding 10 percent of gross domestic product in some countries and scenarios, although only a small set of impact channels is included. The paper also presents estimates of the macroeconomic gains from sector-level adaptation interventions, considering their upfront costs and avoided climate impacts and finding significant net gross domestic product gains from adaptation opportunities identified in the Country Climate and Development Reports. Finally, the paper discusses the limits of current modeling approaches, and their complementarity with empirical approaches based on historical data series. The integrated modeling approach proposed in this paper can inform policymakers as they make proactive decisions on climate change adaptation and resilience.Publication Global Poverty Revisited Using 2021 PPPs and New Data on Consumption(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-05)Recent improvements in survey methodologies have increased measured consumption in many low- and lower-middle-income countries that now collect a more comprehensive measure of household consumption. Faced with such methodological changes, countries have frequently revised upward their national poverty lines to make them appropriate for the new measures of consumption. This in turn affects the World Bank’s global poverty lines when they are periodically revised. The international poverty line, which is based on the typical poverty line in low-income countries, increases by around 40 percent to $3.00 when the more recent national poverty lines as well as the 2021 purchasing power parities are incorporated. The net impact of the changes in international prices, the poverty line, and new survey data (including new data for India) is an increase in global extreme poverty by some 125 million people in 2022, and a significant shift of poverty away from South Asia and toward Sub-Saharan Africa. The changes at higher poverty lines, which are more relevant to middle-income countries, are mixed.
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Metropolitan Governance in Brazil(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-05-29)In less than fifty years, Brazil evolved from a predominantly rural society and economy to a highly urbanized country in which 85 percent of its people now live in urban areas and more than 90 percent of the country’s GDP is generated in the cities. This rapid urbanization process was characterized by a lack of planning and an enduring framework of inequality, resulting in high degrees of concentrated poverty in the urban areas. Much of this urbanization has taken place in metropolitan regions (MRs). MRs have grown more rapidly than the rest of the country, both in population and in GDP terms. In 2010, per capita GDP was higher in MRs than in the rest of the country and metropolitan economies accounted for 70 percent of GDP. At the same time, half of the Brazilian poor and 90 percent of the people living in subnormal conditions were found in metropolitan regions. The recent approval of a new framework for metropolitan governance inBrazil creates the opportunity for debate and evolution regarding several key issues. These include: a) placing metropolitan matters at the forefront of the development arena in Brazil; b) reviewing what has been learned about inter-municipal governance and service delivery; c) estimating resource mobilization needs for metropolitan development; d) coordinating metropolitan land use with transport and housing; e) including metropolitan concerns in any revision of fiscal federalism; and f) promoting environmental sustainability, social inclusion and resilience to disasters and climate change plans at the metropolitan scale. The World Bank can be a partner in addressing these issues. In responding to client demand, the Bank has been providing a range of support to Brazilian states and cities and especially their low- income populations in the areas of infrastructure, social services, slum upgrading, institutional development, river basin management, local economic development, environmental protection, water and sanitation, and transportation.Publication Handshake, No. 4 (January 2012)(International Finance Corporation, Washington, DC, 2012-01)This issue includes the following headings: mass rapid transit: a tool for urban expansion; financing: beyond sovereign guarantees; and low-income housing: lessons from Latin America.Publication Financing Indian Cities : Opportunities and Constraints in an Nth Best World(2010-11-01)This paper examines international experience with mobilizing funding for both capital and recurrent costs for municipal infrastructure with a view to identifying areas where India could improve its system of financing infrastructure in cities. Based on international data, the analysis shows that there is indeed a wide range of models for funding municipal infrastructure across a group even as relatively homogeneous as the European Union. Although a number of different models operate in countries with very good services, important features of India s municipal finance system stand out. The spending per capita is exceptionally low, even when compared with local governments with few functions. The real estate sector generates meager tax revenues, but transfers from higher levels of government are also meager. Turning to cost recovery models for services, the paper examines international evidence on cost recovery. In practice, a surprisingly large number of countries, including high-income countries, subsidize basic municipal services, particularly in water supply and sanitation. Analysis shows that these subsidies often have perverse distributional effects. Likewise, pricing schemes designed to skew subsidies to low-income households often have unintended distributional effects. Again, evidence from urban India suggests that cost recovery is exceptionally low, not only in absolute terms but relative to the experience of other low and middle-income countries. The paper concludes with a discussion of some of the measures that should be considered for improving finances in Indian cities, including land monetization and capital grants systems designed specifically for reaching secondary cities and towns.Publication Service Delivery and Decentralization in Sri Lanka : Assessment and Options(Washington, DC, 2006-05-15)This report assesses Sri Lanka's experience with decentralization to date and discusses options for decentralization and implications for service delivery in three sectors: roads, solid waste and health. The selected sectors illustrate the considerations relevant to the decentralization decision and its future direction. The services selected cover a range of central, provincial and local responsibilities in delivery and illustrate how the cause of success or failure of service delivery is rooted in the institutional framework, division of responsibility, funding mechanisms i.e. incentives and accountability. The effective provision of these services requires a clear understanding of the service delivery goals, technical capacity, adequate assets and recurrent inputs to deliver services. Each sector has its particular needs and to some extent can be considered independently, but the political realities effectively require that any constitutionally mandated and elected level of government have some corresponding responsibilities.Publication Grant Financing of Metropolitan Areas : A Review of Principles and Worldwide Practices(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-03)In the new information age in the globalized and interconnected world, metropolitan areas hold the key to the future prosperity and growth of nations. This paper takes a closer look at grant-financing regimes faced by metropolitan areas and their role in facilitating or hindering improvements in economic and social outcomes of residents of metropolitan areas. A review of 42 large metropolitan areas worldwide shows that, with a few notable exceptions, metropolitan areas in general are hamstrung from playing their potential role in economic advancement. Metro areas have large economic bases and therefore little a priori needs for grant financing, yet they have strong dependence on central transfers. This is because of the highly constrained fiscal autonomy given to these areas, especially in developing countries, with the singular exception of metro areas in China. Such a strong reliance on transfers undermines local autonomy and local accountability. General purpose transfers are formula based , transparent and predictable yet they discriminate against metropolitan areas as they utilize a one size fit all (common formula) for all local governments -- large or small. Such formula typically incorporate equal per jurisdiction component that discriminates against large metropolitan areas. Compactness is rarely rewarded and the greater needs of metro areas for transportation, education, health, culture and welfare go unrecognized. Overall the emphasis in grant financing of metro areas deals with vertical fiscal gaps or project based specific purpose grants. To ensure that metropolitan areas can play their dual roles in improving economic and social outcomes for residents, it is important to strengthen their fiscal autonomy while at the same time enhancing their accountability to local residents. The paper argues that results based grant financing of social and transportation services and tournament based approaches to encourage inter-jurisdictional competition need to be given serious consideration to ensure metropolitan autonomy while strengthening citizen based accountability.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Governance Matters VIII : Aggregate and Individual Governance Indicators 1996–2008(2009-06-01)This paper reports on the 2009 update of the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) research project, covering 212 countries and territories and measuring six dimensions of governance between 1996 and 2008: Voice and Accountability, Political Stability and Absence of Violence/Terrorism, Government Effectiveness, Regulatory Quality, Rule of Law, and Control of Corruption. These aggregate indicators are based on hundreds of specific and disaggregated individual variables measuring various dimensions of governance, taken from 35 data sources provided by 33 different organizations. The data reflect the views on governance of public sector, private sector and NGO experts, as well as thousands of citizen and firm survey respondents worldwide. The authors also explicitly report the margins of error accompanying each country estimate. These reflect the inherent difficulties in measuring governance using any kind of data. They find that even after taking margins of error into account, the WGI permit meaningful cross-country comparisons as well as monitoring progress over time. The aggregate indicators, together with the disaggregated underlying indicators, are available at www.govindicators.org.Publication Breaking the Conflict Trap : Civil War and Development Policy(Washington, DC: World Bank and Oxford University Press, 2003)Most wars are now civil wars. Even though international wars attract enormous global attention, they have become infrequent and brief. Civil wars usually attract less attention, but they have become increasingly common and typically go on for years. This report argues that civil war is now an important issue for development. War retards development, but conversely, development retards war. This double causation gives rise to virtuous and vicious circles. Where development succeeds, countries become progressively safer from violent conflict, making subsequent development easier. Where development fails, countries are at high risk of becoming caught in a conflict trap in which war wrecks the economy and increases the risk of further war. The global incidence of civil war is high because the international community has done little to avert it. Inertia is rooted in two beliefs: that we can safely 'let them fight it out among themselves' and that 'nothing can be done' because civil war is driven by ancestral ethnic and religious hatreds. The purpose of this report is to challenge these beliefs.Publication Government Matters III : Governance Indicators for 1996-2002(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2003-08)The authors present estimates of six dimensions of governance covering 199 countries and territories for four time periods: 1996, 1998, 2000, and 2002. These indicators are based on several hundred individual variables measuring perceptions of governance, drawn from 25 separate data sources constructed by 18 different organizations. The authors assign these individual measures of governance to categories capturing key dimensions of governance and use an unobserved components model to construct six aggregate governance indicators in each of the four periods. They present the point estimates of the dimensions of governance as well as the margins of errors for each country for the four periods. The governance indicators reported here are an update and expansion of previous research work on indicators initiated in 1998 (Kaufmann, Kraay, and Zoido-Lobat 1999a,b and 2002). The authors also address various methodological issues, including the interpretation and use of the data given the estimated margins of errors.Publication Design Thinking for Social Innovation(2010-07)Designers have traditionally focused on enchancing the look and functionality of products.Publication Governance Matters IV : Governance Indicators for 1996-2004(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2005-06)The authors present the latest update of their aggregate governance indicators, together with new analysis of several issues related to the use of these measures. The governance indicators measure the following six dimensions of governance: (1) voice and accountability; (2) political instability and violence; (3) government effectiveness; (4) regulatory quality; (5) rule of law, and (6) control of corruption. They cover 209 countries and territories for 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002, and 2004. They are based on several hundred individual variables measuring perceptions of governance, drawn from 37 separate data sources constructed by 31 organizations. The authors present estimates of the six dimensions of governance for each period, as well as margins of error capturing the range of likely values for each country. These margins of error are not unique to perceptions-based measures of governance, but are an important feature of all efforts to measure governance, including objective indicators. In fact, the authors give examples of how individual objective measures provide an incomplete picture of even the quite particular dimensions of governance that they are intended to measure. The authors also analyze in detail changes over time in their estimates of governance; provide a framework for assessing the statistical significance of changes in governance; and suggest a simple rule of thumb for identifying statistically significant changes in country governance over time. The ability to identify significant changes in governance over time is much higher for aggregate indicators than for any individual indicator. While the authors find that the quality of governance in a number of countries has changed significantly (in both directions), they also provide evidence suggesting that there are no trends, for better or worse, in global averages of governance. Finally, they interpret the strong observed correlation between income and governance, and argue against recent efforts to apply a discount to governance performance in low-income countries.