Introduction

Caulfield, Janice; Larsen, Helge O.

doi:10.1007/978-3-663-10679-1_1

Cited by 10 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 1 publication

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“…Territorial reforms have invariably been in one direction: to make local governments larger. The agenda has been one of municipal amalgamations (Caulfield & Larsen 2002; Vetter & Kersting 2003a, 2003b; Sancton 2000).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Municipal Amalgamations and Common Pool Problems: The Danish Local Government Reform in 2007

Blom‐Hansen

2010

Scandinavian Political Studies

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Amalgamating municipalities carries risks in terms of public expenditure control. The tax base of the new amalgamated municipality represents a common pool resource. The incentive is to exploit it -that is, to spend before closing time. This article investigates last-minute spending by Danish municipalities before the local government reform in 2007 in which 271 municipalities were reduced to 98. It shows that local councillors exploited this situation to finance local projects before closing time. The article thus demonstrates the occurrence of common pool problems in amalgamation situations. However, it also shows that it is the availability of a common pool that matters, not its size.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Municipal Amalgamations and Common Pool Problems: The Danish Local Government Reform in 2007

Blom‐Hansen

2010

Scandinavian Political Studies

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“…However, the reform trend has been uniform: to reduce costs by making local governments larger. The agenda has been one of municipal amalgamations as an instrument to harvest scale effects (Baldersheim and Rose ; Caulfield and Larsen ; King and Ma ; Sancton ; Vetter and Kersting , ).…”

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confidence: 99%

Size, Democracy, and the Economic Costs of Running the Political System

Blom‐Hansen

Houlberg²,

Serritzlew

2014

American J Political Sci

139

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The search for the optimal size of political systems is one of the most enduring in political thought. Given the validity of arguments for and against small units, one might expect variation in rearrangements of unit sizes. However, the reform trend is uniform: units, often at the local level, are amalgamated to harvest scale effects. The purpose of this article is to evaluate the argument on economies of scale in the economic costs of running political systems. Our testing ground is a recent Danish reform. It allows us to avoid endogeneity problems often facing researchers of size reforms. The reform was directed by the central government and constitutes an exogenous shock to 239 municipalities, whereas 32 municipalities were left untouched. We thus have a quasi-experiment with pre-and posttreatment observations for both an experiment and a control group. Our findings show that scale effects, measured as administrative costs per inhabitant, are considerable.

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“…2005), focus is on initiatives such as inter‐municipal cooperation, public‐private partnerships and quangos, which are associated with a model of ‘local governance’ rather than ‘local government’ (for a distinction, see John 2001). However, a number of European countries have also recently considered (and in some cases even used) what has been called a more ‘classic solution’ (Caulfield & Larsen 2002, 18) to the challenge of local government reform – namely amalgamations of municipalities/counties. High hopes, and large investments, have been paid to reorganisations of sub‐national governmental structures based on the assumption that larger governmental units will facilitate the reaping of the rewards traditionally associated with economies of scale, pooling of professional competences and concentration of local power (Dahl & Tufte 1973; Keating 1995; Martins 1995; Boyne 1995).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Split‐ticket Voting in Times of Sub‐national Government Reorganisation: Evidence from Denmark

Elklit

Kjær

2009

Scand Pol Stud

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Local government amalgamations may have unintended consequences on electoral behaviour. Using the most recent local elections in Denmark as its case, this article demonstrates that inter‐level split‐ticket voting between three levels (national, regional and local) decreased slightly from 2001 to 2005 – that is, simultaneously with the implementation of a major reform, where many municipalities and all the counties were amalgamated. These amalgamations affect the level of split voting through a process where the local party system operates as an intervening variable: the larger municipalities have a more nationalised local party system, which leads to fewer voters being vote splitters by necessity. The analyses combine general electoral statistics with large voter surveys and benefit from the quasi‐experimental setting offered by the fact that not all municipalities were amalgamated.

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Introduction

Cited by 10 publications

References 1 publication

Municipal Amalgamations and Common Pool Problems: The Danish Local Government Reform in 2007

Municipal Amalgamations and Common Pool Problems: The Danish Local Government Reform in 2007

Size, Democracy, and the Economic Costs of Running the Political System

Split‐ticket Voting in Times of Sub‐national Government Reorganisation: Evidence from Denmark

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