Social Actors and their Role in Metropolitan Governance in Montréal: Towards an Inclusive Coalition? 1 Juan-Luis Klein and Diane-Gabrielle Tremblay Abstract The article is about the role of civil society organizations in the governance of the Montréal metropolitan region. It identifies a high level of cooperation around metropolitan scale issues on the part of these organizations. In the Montréal region, government agencies as well as private corporations demonstrate readiness to work alongside civil society organizations on joint projects. Evidence of this type of collaboration is particularly strong in the case of economic development, neighbourhood revitalization and cultural initiatives. This form of cooperation is perceived as a manifestation of the so-called “Québec model” and is an asset for the Montréal metropolitan region. The article demonstrates that interventions that involve social organizations are more likely to be successful than those that turn their back on these organizations. Key words: Metropolitan governance, regime theory, Quebec Model, civil society actors This article discusses the role of civil society in governance related to socioeconomic development in the Montréal metropolitan region. It aims to show that civil society plays a significant role in shaping socioeconomic orientations and the governance framework. The contribution of civil society may in fact be a consequence of the absence of a well-established governance or regime framework, or the result of an inclusive governing culture. The paper is structured in four sections. First, we lay the theoretical and conceptual framework of our analysis. We present the sources of our theoretical inspiration, namely, “urban regime theory,” the “resource mobilization approach,” and the “neo-institutionalist framework.” These three sources will help frame the hypothesis that the specificity of the administrative framework of the Montréal metropolitan region allows civil society based organisations to shape cohesive and inclusive governance. We contend that this characteristic is due to Montréal’s institutional structure, which has been shaped by the changes that took 1 Findings reported in this paper derive from a research project entitled “Social Dynamics of Economic Performance: Innovation and Creativity in City Regions,” coordinated by David Wolfe from the University of Toronto and financed by the Major Collaborative Research Initiatives program of the Social Science and Humanities research Council of Canada.