Paper short abstract:

Urban issues cut across boundaries and require inter-municipal cooperation for effective solutions. But what drives this cooperation, and why would cooperation emerge in one setting and not the other under similar conditions in the African Metropolis?

Paper long abstract:

Due to urban fragmentation in sub-Saharan Africa, inter-municipal cooperation (IMC) is required to address integrated urban planning interventions that cut across boundaries. Despite the many known drivers of Inter-municipal cooperation (IMC) in the literature, it is impossible to establish which drivers matter most when service outcomes are intangible and pose a high risk of freeriding. The studies that establish the drivers of IMC are limited to single variable relations and net effects, while in reality, it is expected that the factors that drive IMC will be conjunctural and thus must not be viewed as isolated explanations. This paper fills the methodological gap by adopting QCA to elicit the necessary and sufficient factors that drive IMC. We use a rare comparative case study of IMC in three African metropolises in the implementation of transportation infrastructure projects. The findings show that no overarching factors must be present for IMC success. However, the availability of financial incentives or political alignment between the preferences of local government officials and their principals are critical contributing factors for IMC's success.