DISCOVERING AMERICAN REGIONALISM
Regions are difficult to govern coordinating policies across local jurisdictional boundaries in the absence of a formal regional government gives rise to enormous challenges. Yet some degree of coordination is almost always essential for local governments to effectively fulfill their responsibilities to their citizens. State and local governments have, over time, awkwardly, and with much experimenting, developed common approaches to regional governance. In this revolutionary new book, authors David Miller and Jen Nelles offer a new way to conceptualize those common approaches: Regional Intergovernmental Organizations (RIGOs) that bring together local governments to coordinate policies across jurisdictional boundaries.
RIGOs are not governments themselves, but as Miller and Nelles demonstrate, they do have a measure of political authority that allows them to quietly and sometimes almost invisibly work to further regional interests and mitigate cross-boundary irritations. Providing a new conceptual framework for understanding how regional decision-making has emerged in the U.S., this book will provoke a new and rich era of discussion about American regionalism in theory and practice. Discovering American Regionalism will be a future classic in the study of intergovernmental relations, regionalism, and cross-boundary collaboration.
David Miller is Professor of Public Policy and Management at the University of Pittsburghs Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (GSPIA), USA.
Jen Nelles is Visiting Associate Professor in the Department Urban Public Policy at Hunter College (CUNY), USA.
DISCOVERING
AMERICAN
REGIONALISM
An Introduction to Regional
Intergovernmental Organizations
David Miller and Jen Nelles
with George Dougherty and
Jay Rickabaugh
First published 2019
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
2019 Taylor & Francis
The right of David Miller and Jen Nelles to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Miller, David Young, author. | Nelles, Jen, 1979- author.
Title: Discovering American regionalism : an introduction to regional intergovernmental organizations / David Miller and Jen Nelles ; with George Dougherty and Jay Rickabaugh
Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018006462| ISBN 9780815374046 (hbk : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780815374268 (pbk : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781351242653 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Local governmentUnited States. | State governmentsUnited States. | Intergovernmental cooperationUnited States. | State-local relationsUnited States. | Interstate relationsUnited States. | Interstate agenciesUnited States. | Regional planningUnited States.
Classification: LCC JS348 .M55 2018 | DDC 320.80973dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018006462
ISBN: 978-0-8153-7404-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-8153-7426-8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-351-24265-3 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK
David Miller is a Professor of Public Policy and Management at the University of Pittsburghs Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (GSPIA). He also serves as the Director of the Center for Metropolitan Studies and as the Founding Advisor for Congress of Neighboring Communities (CONNECT). In addition to numerous journal articles and book chapters on regional governance, regional financing of urban services, and municipal fiscal distress, Dr. Miller is the author of Governing the Metropolitan Region: Americas Newest Frontier (New York: Taylor and Francis, 2014) and The Regional Governing of Metropolitan America (Boulder: Westview Press, 2002). As a practitioner, he has served as the Acting and Associate Dean of GSPIA, Director of Management and Budget for the City of Pittsburgh, Managing Director of the Pennsylvania Economy League and as a municipal manager in Sanford, Windham, and Dover-Foxcroft (all in Maine). Dr. Miller holds an honorary Doctor of Public Service degree from Nasson College and is a recipient of the University of Pittsburghs Chancellors Distinguished Public Service Award. Currently, he is a Commissioner on the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission (SPC), the Regional Intergovernmental Organization (RIGO) for the region. Dr. Miller holds a B.A. in political science from Syracuse University, and M.P.A. from Kent State University and a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh.
Jen Nelles is a Visiting Associate Professor in the Department Urban Public Policy at Hunter College (CUNY) in New York City. Her research, consulting and teaching focuses on developing ways of improving coordination between local authorities to address modern social, economic and environmental issues that inevitably transcend geographical and jurisdictional boundaries. She is the author of Comparative Metropolitan Policy: Governing Beyond Boundaries in the Imagined Metropolis (London and New York: Routledge, 2012) and co-author of A Quiet Evolution: The Emergence of Indigenous-Municipal Intergovernmental Partnerships in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016) and over 30 peer-reviewed articles on regional governance, regional economic development, intergovernmental relations and collective action.
George Dougherty, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor, Director of the Master of Public Policy and Management Degree, and Public Service Degree Coordinator at the University of Pittsburghs GSPIA. Dr. Dougherty holds a Bachelors degree in management from the Georgia Institute of Technology and Masters and Doctoral degrees in Political Science and Public Administration from the University of Georgia. His current research and service interests include citizen engagement, local government finance and regional governance.
Jay Rickabaugh is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Pittsburghs GSPIA. His dissertation Finding Every Unique Balance: Institutional Decision-Making Rules in Regional Intergovernmental Organizations (working title) evaluates the relationships among local governments within and across RIGOs. He earned his Masters in Public Administration from the University of Pittsburgh, and his B.A. degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
This is an ambitious book and is nowhere near what we thought we would produce when we started some three years ago. We had what we thought was a simple question: Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) have been around for over fifty years; have they spawned meaningful regional governance in Americas intergovernmental system? To make a long story short, the answer to that question is a definitive no followed by and they never will.
