Metropolitan Governance: Challenges and Proposals from Local Governments—The Case of Andalusia, Spain

Metropolitan area governance has become a key focus in the academic literature, particularly regarding institutional models, intergovernmental cooperation, and the role of local governments. Yet less is known about whether local governments diagnose metropolitan governance problems in ways that are consistent with the institutional solutions they consider appropriate, especially in countries with weak metropolitan institutionalisation. This study addresses this gap by examining how local governments in ten metropolitan areas of Andalusia, Spain, perceive existing governance challenges and the institutional models required to address them. An extensive quantitative analysis was conducted through a direct survey of local political decision-makers and technical staff. The study links theoretically identified governance dilemmas to perceived local challenges and preferred institutional responses, thereby assessing the coherence between problem diagnosis and proposed solutions. The findings reveal a preference for technical, flexible, and functional arrangements—particularly metropolitan agencies and vertical coordination—over more politically integrated models such as metropolitan governments. The article therefore contributes evidence on the Spanish metropolitan governance anomaly and on the local political-institutional conditions that help explain the persistence of “metropolitan governance without metropolitan government”.