Citizens’ Perceptions of Metropolitan Governance in Europe: a Cross-National Comparison

The organization of governance in metropolitan areas is subject to a long-running scientific debate. For a long time, research relating to this debate focused on issues related to territory, institutions and policies but the role of the citizens have received insufficient attention. More recently, some studies have focused on citizens’ perspectives on issues of metropolitan governance. They are, however, mostly limited to the analysis of cases within the same countries. This paper presents results from a representative citizen survey recently conducted in eight metropolitan areas located in four European countries: Birmingham, London, Lyon, Paris, Stuttgart, Berlin, Zurich and Bern. Investigating citizens’ assessments of the quality of government output, their perceptions of a variety of governance arrangements, as well as levels of trust in government and satisfaction with democracy at the metropolitan level, this paper ultimately seeks to contribute to assessing different institutional choices for the political organization of metropolitan areas in Europe.