Jefferey M. Sellers, Department of Political Science

The International Metropolitan Observatory Project (IMO) is a global network of social scientists investigating
cities and their surrounding regions. Organized in 2002 at the initiative of Vincent Hoffmann-Martinot (CERVL-CNRS/
Sciences Po Bordeaux) and Jefferey Sellers (University of Southern California, Los Angeles), the IMO is currently
co-directed by Jefferey Sellers and Daniel Kübler (University of Zürich/University of Applied Sciences of
Northwest Switzerland).

The IMO arises from a need that many researchers have acknowledged to extend analysis of society and politics beyond
either cities or countries to the urban and exurban regions that increasingly dominate patterns of settlement around the
world. The Project has a dual aim. At the same time it seeks to gather and systematize a global database
of information on critical aspects of metropolitan regions, it is also undertaking a coordinated series of workshops
to analyze crucial and little-understood aspects of politics and governance in these settings from a systematic
transnational perspective.

The Project first convened September 28, 2002 in Stuttgart, Germany. In 2003 the Poject received support
from the French GRALE (Groupement de Recherche sur l'Administration Locale en Europe) and the Centre
National de Recherche Scientifique to carry out a series of international workshops on metropolitan topics. Subsequent
workshops have been funded by the Thyssen Foundation and the University of Southern California Provost's Program
for Advancing Scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The workshops have consisted of papers prepared by
representatives from each country according to a jointly developed set of protocols. Within the participating countries, a
wide variety of national and local funders have helped support the research, from the Haynes Foundation and the
METRANS Center for Transportation Research in the United States to the Swiss NCCR Democracy 21, to the
Brazilian Center for Metropolitan Studies.

The first workshop, held in Bordeaux on January 9-10, 2004, included participants from a total of
sixteen countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and North America. Participants gave an overview of the
metropolitan transformations currently under way in each country, along with the political implications. On the
basis of an agreed upon protocol designed to reconcile the international variations in metropolitan definitions, participants
were then asked to collect and analyze data on metropolitan areas with populations over 200,000. The analyses
focussed on recent trends toward exurban settlement and metropolitan polarization, on resemblances to the
stereotypical U.S. metropolitan patterns of suburbanization and segregation, on effects from metrpolitan settlement
and change on political behavior, and on plans for future workshops. The papers are now published in
Vincent Hoffmann-Martinot and Jefferey Sellers (eds.), Metropolitanization and Political Change
(Wiesbaden: Verlag fuer Sozialwissenschaften, 2005); French edition CNRS Press 2007)..

The second phase of the project, entitled The Political Ecology of the Metropolis, draws on data and analyses of
the first volume to scrutinize the effects from emerging metropolitan patterns on changing partisan cleavages and on
voter turnout in national and local elections. A forthcoming volume from this phase, based on workshops in Bordeaux
in May 2005 and in Stuttgart in January 2007, will be edited by Jefferey Sellers, Daniel Kübler, Melanie Walter-
Rogg and Alan Walks. The analyses of this volume, based on local data from ten countries, show how changes in metro-
politan areas and regions account for shifts in partisan political cleaveages across the developed world and beyond.
A second component of the project undertakes the first contextualized comparative analysis of election turnout in national
and local elections. This analysis shows turnout reflects both national institutional differences and local practices that
vary systematically among metropolitan localities. Papers from this project have been presented at meetings of the International
Political Science Association, the European Consortium for Political Research, the American Political Science Association,
the Urban Affairs Association and numerous other venues. Project findings about the metropolitan bases of new political
cleavages were presented at panels of the Amercan Political Science Association Annual Meeting in Toronto, Canada and the
European Consortium for Political Research Biennial General Conference in Potsdam, Germany in September 2009.

A third phase, begun in 2007, focuses on Metropolitan Inequality and Governance. This phase builds on the political, economic
and spatial data already collected in previous phases, and on an expanded group of participants that includes representatives
from several large developing countries. The analysis of this phase focuses on the spatial inequality that has increasingly
characterized the proliferating metropolitan regions of both developed and developing countries. Using local fiscal and other
data, participants are examining how policies and institutions at national, regional and metropolitan levels have aggravated or
mitigated inequalities in services across metropolitan regions. Initial papers for this project were presented at a workshop at the
European Consortium for Political Research Joint Workshops in Rennes in April 2008, and a second workshop on this agenda
was held in January 2009 at the University of Southern California. Panels presenting cross-national findings from the study are
scheduled at the International Political Science Association Meeting in Santiago, Chile in July 2009, and at the American Political
Science Association Annual Meeting in Toronto, Canada in September 2009.

Subsequent phases of the Project are also under development. The coordinators welcome feedback as well as inquiries about
opportunities for collaboration in this emerging, increasingly important research agenda.

International Metropolitan Observatory documents:

Kübler homepage | Sellers homepage
University of Applied Sciences of Northwest Switzerland | USC Political Science
USC Center for International Studies
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