Citizen Voice and Public Entrepreneurship: The Organizational Dynamic of a Complex Metropolitan County

Recent empirical research points toward a reassessment of theeffects of complex patterns of local government in metropolitanareas. As research increasingly discloses positive relationshipsbetween (1) indicators of jurisdictional fragmentation and complexityand (2) indicators of efficiency in service provision and production,it becomes more important to explain, in a functional sense,how a complex metropolitan order is able to produce relativelygood results. This article first considers two broad approachesto understanding metropolitan complexity—exit and voice—andargues that citizen voice must be the principal mechanism ofcomplex metropolitan governance A case study of St. Louis County,Missouri, is then used to explore the various processes by whichcitizen voice may contribute to the organization and governanceof a metropolitan county. Citizen voice is linked to publicentrepreneurship and, thereby, to various efficiency-inducingproperties that emerge within a complex metropolitan order.