How are fragmented metropolitan areas characterized by multiple actors and multiple relationships governed? This has been a question of enduring interest in the study of local politics and policy. Recent works have made progress in understanding the emergence of self-organizing networks for individual service relationships. However, in the context of multiple service relationships, patterns of service networks that evolve as a consequence of local governments’ actions to address transaction problems have been long overlooked. This article begins to fill this gap in the literature by analyzing pay-for-service contracts across multiple municipal services in one metropolitan county in Florida. The results obtained from matrix correlation and matrix regression based on a quadratic assignment procedure reveal that local jurisdictions develop cross-service reciprocity networks in a multiple services contract environment to resolve credibility of commitment problems they encounter in entering and maintaining interlocal service contracts.
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