Institutional Collective Action and Metropolitan Governance in Latin America: A Theoretical Framework

Metropolitan regions in Latin America (LA) face rapid urban expansion, fragmented authority, overlapping jurisdictions, and limited institutional capacity that challenge their environments, economic development, and social well-being. Regional collective action offers cooperative solutions to accommodate population growth, infrastructure demands, and economic activities while minimizing environmental impacts. Nevertheless, collective action is challenging because of incentives to free ride. The Institutional collective action (ICA) theory of intergovernmental collaboration has been applied in Western contexts, but may be a poor fit to LA because its assumptions don’t align with its political, administrative, and socio-economic realities. This article develops a theoretical framework—the LA-ICA Framework—that modifies core ICA concepts to account for high levels of centralization, heterogeneous local capacities, economic inequality, weak professionalization, and the prominent role of national governments. We theorize how collaborative mechanism transaction costs and collaboration risk influence collaborations and identify four ideal-type integration mechanisms that emerge from these constraints. By extending ICA theory to the Latin American context, this article provides a conceptual foundation for analyzing metropolitan governance in the region and guidance for designing collaborative institutions. It contributes to urban planning, governance and public policy by identifying how metropolitan regions in Latin America can address regional urban growth dilemmas.