Mapping the landscape of transnational municipal networks

As a growing type of political organisation, transnational municipal networks (TMNs) have been the subject of increasing and interdisciplinary scholarly interest in recent years. In their efforts to understand the causes, functioning, and effects of TMNs, however, existing studies proceed for the most part on the basis of small empirical samples or, at best, ad hoc sectoral datasets. This in turn connects to the paucity of global data on city networks, and more generally to the difficulty of collecting systematic information on this type of organisation. In an attempt to fill this gap, the article introduces a new approach to gathering TMN data, and analyses the landscape of city networks based on an original dataset of 131 organisations worldwide. The study presents empirical findings that will be of interest to TMN scholars and practitioners alike, and aims to spur a methodological discussion on how to best investigate this elusive institutional form.