The paper analyzes the evolution of the process of institutionalization of Brazilian metropolitan areas, where the object of empirical cases Natal-RN and Aracaju-SE. Through historical and comparative institutional analysis on the constitution of regulatory arrangements of the metropolitan areas of Natal and Aracaju, seeks to understand how was the process of training, cooperation in the management of metropolitan areas analyzed. Despite their different specific contexts of each metropolitan area, there is a common characteristic in both there are no institutional mechanisms and cooperation so as Federated intrametropolitan that encourage interest from federal agencies for cooperation. Although there is a fragile political motivation in both cases analyzed, they show a low institutionalization, which characterizes these two metropolitan areas as a framework for cooperation incipient making it impossible to advance in terms of metropolitan management.
Metropolitan Management; Institutional Theory; Collective Action