Not so polycentric: The stratified structure & national drivers of transnational municipal networks

As members of transnational municipal networks (TMNs), city governments increasingly create a landscape of
global governance complementary to but largely independent of traditional, nation-state dominated organizations, from climate change governance to peacebuilding. But a growing number of cities now maintain multiple
simultaneous memberships in different TMNs, affording a powerful minority of cities greater representation in
world affairs, a skewed landscape that has to date received little attention. To examine the forces shaping this
landscape of global governance, we analyze a detailed database of the TMN memberships of over 10,000 cities,
observing memberships in both all TMNs collectively and specifically environmentally-focused TMNs.
We find that this landscape mirrors the highly stratified core-periphery structure of cities in the world
economy, where the most economically powerful cities maintain the most simultaneous memberships in TMNs of
both sorts, affording them the greatest ability to set agendas and project ideas within global urban governance. In
short, the same 4% of cities that connect the world economy together also have the most representation in global
governance. This suggests a markedly more centralized landscape of global urban governance than much of the
polycentricity literature expects. We also show how national attributes influence city participation. While democracy matters more for city memberships in all TMNs collectively, national action on global environmental
governance matters more for city participation in environmental TMNs. Specifically, cities with more memberships in environmental TMNs tend to be in nations that ratify more international environmental treaties,
indicating that participation serves a complementary role to national action. Cities with more memberships in all
TMNs collectively tend to be in nations with higher civil liberties scores, indicating that cities from democratic
regimes tend to be those most represented in this landscape.