Metropolitan governance and environmental outcomes: Does inter-municipal cooperation make a difference?

We develop a three-level mixed-effects linear model to conduct a systematic large-n study testing the impact of cooperation in transportation on CO2 transport emissions. We use a novel dataset covering over 200 metropolitan areas in 16 OECD countries. The findings demonstrate that both fragmented and consolidated metropolitan governance structures are equally inefficient in delivering a reduction in CO2 transport emissions. Further, without functional enforcement mechanisms, mitigation policies fail to have a positive effect on environmental outcomes. Inter-municipal cooperation in metropolitan areas facilitates coherence and widespread enforcement and emerges as a crucial factor explaining the reduction of CO2 transport emissions. Effects of metropolitan cooperation on transportation are magnified by the presence of national environmental mitigation policies.