The Legitimacy of the Local State: Citizens’ Perceptions of Local Democratic Legitimacy in Western European Metropolitan Areas

The pressure for state reconfiguration and multi-level governance reforms at the subnational level is particularly prevalent in metropolitan areas. Metropolitan areas are highly integrated spaces in functional terms, yet most of them remain politically fragmented into a maze of lo-cal governments. This institutional mismatch can be a challenge for the democratic legiti-macy of the local state. In this paper, we examine this challenge from a citizens’ perspective: how do citizens’ perceive the democratic legitimacy of local governments in metropolitan areas? To answer this question, we use data from a survey conducted on 5000 respondents in eight metropolitan areas in France, Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom in fall 2015. We assess how citizens’ perceptions of local democratic procedures (local external po-litical efficacy and trust in local government) and local performance (evaluation of local problem-solving and local services) covary with individual- and municipal characteristics. First, we expect that individuals who are more spatially mobile perceive local government to be less legitimate, since they are more exposed, aware and concerned with metropolitan problems – which are difficult to address for local governments. Second, we expect individu-als living in more ‘important’ municipalities of a metropolitan area (e.g. large and central local governments) to perceive the legitimacy of their local government to be higher, since the latter plays a more important role in solving metropolitan problems. Finally, we expect the adverse effect of spatial mobility on local democratic legitimacy perceptions to be stronger among residents of small and peripheral municipalities. They are probably particu-larly aware and confronted with their local government’s inability to deal with metropolitan problems. Our findings have implications for the territorial reconfiguration of metropolitan spaces in that they highlight the importance of taking the citizens’ perspective into account when drafting proposals for metropolitan reform.