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Taking Time and Space Seriously in the Study of Amalgamation Reforms: Exploratory Analysis and Some Descriptive Generalizations

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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 chapters employs the analytical tools of Historical Comparative Analysis to explore how the history of local government systems has conditioned the choice of amalgamation reforms across European countries and over time. In the first section, the date of birth of each local government system is identified in its chronological time and the time sequence of adoption in each country is then compared to the geographical location of each system to detect possible clusters across space and over time. In the second section, each local government system is divided into periods bookended by critical junctures. These periodizations will help in the detection of common patterns of consolidation and/or fragmentation across local government systems as well as highlight possible longue durée structures, particularly secular, cyclical or convergence trends. The chapter closes with the deployment of two tools of physical time—duration and tempo—to uncover regularities in amalgamation reforms across space and time.

Consult other sources—promising—unpromising.

—Brian Eno

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Beyond territory, legitimate authority was also derived from “jurisdictional rights and duties as well as personal feudal bonds” (Branch, 2014: 69).

  2. 2.

    A local charter (carta foral) aimed to establish a municipality and regulate its administration, duties and privileges. The Portuguese Crown began assigning local charters as early as the eleventh century. The charter released the municipality from feudal control, transferring power to a “neighbors council”, with its own municipal autonomy. It placed the population directly and exclusively under the dominion and jurisdiction of the Crown, excluding the feudal lord from the hierarchy of power (Mattoso, 1993; Oliveira, 1996).

  3. 3.

    All sources of this information are included in Appendix A at the end of the book.

  4. 4.

    Luxembourg’s local self-government begins even before it consolidated its modern-day borders with the First Treaty of London in 1839. The first Local Government Act after independence was approved in 1843 (Goerens, 2012).

  5. 5.

    The rural communities in Germany were regulated by law much later, in 1891.

  6. 6.

    The adoption of the Hungarian Constitution (Stadion Constitution) in 1848 is the origin of local self-government in the Slovak Republic. The modern local government system in the newly created Czechoslovakia dates back to 1918 (Spáč, 2021).

  7. 7.

    The Czech Republic had around 200 towns with local self-government in 1784, but the initial formal proposal appeared in the Stadion Constitution of 1848. Full coverage began in 1862 with the so-called dual track system, separating classes of municipalities (Pomahač, 2013).

  8. 8.

    Local self-government began after the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 and the municipal acts of 1870 (Act XLII) and 1871 (Act XVIII) (Szente, 2012; Siket, 2017).

  9. 9.

    The initial experiences of local self-government in Romania began following the unification of the Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia ruled by Alexander Ioan Cuza in 1859 and the first Romanian Constitution of 1866, which proposed the territorial division of the country into counties, plăși and communes (Hintea et al., 2021). However, the reform for the administrative unification of Romanian provinces would only take place much later, in 1925 (Săgeată, 2011; Stănuș, 2021).

  10. 10.

    Despite the long history of local self-government, the Dutch system was effectively born with the advent of the liberal monarchy and the Constitution of 1848. The Municipality Act of 1851 regulates the administration of municipalities and it is still in effect (Van Haaren-Dresens, 2012). I follow De Ceuninck et al. (2010) and include the Netherlands in the Nordic tradition.

  11. 11.

    Local self-government in rural Sweden dates back to the 1807 and 1843 ordinances, which recognized the role of parishes in providing relief for the poor. However, 1862 is considered the year of the birth of the local government system, with the separation of Church and State and with municipalities becoming responsible for secular affairs (Madell, 2012). This separation is also present in Denmark and Norway, albeit with slight variations. In Norway, the territorial boundaries of rural communes were also based on religious parishes, whereas urban communes were based on pre-existing political-administrative entities (Hansen, 2016). In Denmark, “the main rule was that those pastorates with a common poverty care system—and that was most of them—should be the new municipalities, no matter the number of parishes in the pastorate” (Bundsgaard, 2000: 857).

  12. 12.

    The justification for the beginning and end of each period for each local government system is included in the main text and is complemented by Appendix B.

  13. 13.

    Municipalities in Portugal are not the product of the conversion of Catholic parishes. Religious parishes were converted into civil parishes at the end of the nineteenth century and became a sub-municipal level of government, which is itself extremely fragmented and resembles the early fragmented systems of France, Norway or Sweden, for example. In contrast, Portuguese municipalities have a secular origin related to the assignment by kings of the carta foral, a document which recognized local autonomy and secured public lands for the collective use of the community, regulated taxes, fees and fines, and established protective rights and military duties within the royal service.

  14. 14.

    Together with Poland, Germany is perhaps one of the most difficult countries to assess in terms of the evolution of its local government system. Partly this is related to the varying traditions and influences in the different Länder, but most importantly due to the variation in the national borders following both World Wars. Eberhardt (2017) offers a detailed historical account of the variation of national borders and of Germany’s territorial gains and losses as a result of these conflicts.

  15. 15.

    The 1839 Treaty of London resulted in the Third Partition of Luxembourg, which gave Luxembourg its modern-day borders. The first Local Government Act was approved in 1843.

  16. 16.

    In the Iberian tradition, these are successful and charismatic local party leaders who recruit voters based on the exchange of favours.

  17. 17.

    http://www.ssb.no, Accessed on July 26, 2023.

  18. 18.

    As an example of these “incorporations”, in 1934, Zurich absorbed Affoltern bei Zürich, Albisrieden, Altstetten, Höngg, Oerlikon, Schwamendingen, Seebach and Witikon (https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/en/home/basics/swiss-official-commune-register.html, Accessed on July 24, 2023). Conceptually, and according to the literature discussed in Chap. 1, these are not incorporations in the American literature sense of the term, but rather mergers or annexations.

  19. 19.

    https://www.gov.uk/guidance/local-government-structure-and-elections.

  20. 20.

    Bolgherini and Gabrielli 2022s own computation from data from https://www.tuttitalia.it.

  21. 21.

    While involved in forced amalgamations during their Communist regimes, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania were never fully consolidated, so it would be incorrect to say they reverted to a fragmented state which they never left to begin with.

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Tavares, A. (2024). Taking Time and Space Seriously in the Study of Amalgamation Reforms: Exploratory Analysis and Some Descriptive Generalizations. In: Municipal Amalgamation Reforms. Palgrave Studies in Sub-National Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-54736-2_5

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