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Evaluation of Amalgamations Reforms

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Municipal Amalgamation Reforms

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Sub-National Governance ((PSSNG))

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Abstract

This chapter conducts a review of the empirical results reported in the municipal amalgamations literature according to economic, managerial and political criteria. This undertaking shows that the evaluations present in the literature have focused primarily on the impacts in one category of effects and in single country cases. A close inspection shows several gaps and omissions in prior empirical studies, which I discuss in detail in the final section of the chapter.

You don’t have to be ashamed of using your own ideas.

—Brian Eno

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://www.timminstoday.com/then-and-now/amalgamation-plan-sparked-a-bitter-battle-in-the-porcupine-camp-6443634. Accessed on July 14, 2023.

  2. 2.

    Earlier work in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, confirms the same point. Drew et al. (2016) found that, following the forced municipal amalgamations in NSW in 2007, 84% of the residents were living in municipalities operating in the diseconomies of scale range.

  3. 3.

    A study of municipal mergers in Japan also detects fiscal common pool problems in smaller municipalities merging with a dominant partner (Hirota & Yunoue, 2017). For the smaller municipalities, the increase in investment expenditures and bonds varies between 13% and 16.5% from average levels, which is quite similar to the findings reported by Hinnerich (2009) for the Swedish case. No evidence was found for the larger merging partners.

  4. 4.

    Scant evidence from other countries is also positive or mixed, but the unique nature of their local government systems requires caution in extending these findings to the European context (see Tang and Hewings (2017) for China and Hall et al. (2020) for the United States).

  5. 5.

    Early work by Mabuchi (2001) reached similar findings for education, sanitation and social welfare services after municipal amalgamations in Japan.

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  1. Research Center in Political Science, School of Economics and Management, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal

    António Tavares

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Tavares, A. (2024). Evaluation of Amalgamations Reforms. In: Municipal Amalgamation Reforms. Palgrave Studies in Sub-National Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-54736-2_2

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