Voluntary amalgamation of local governments: the Swiss debate in the European context

Dafflon, Bernard

doi:10.4337/9781782544302.00012

Cited by 24 publications

(39 citation statements)

References 2 publications

(5 reference statements)

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“…1 Major municipal merger reforms have been implemented over time in a number of countries including Canada, Denmark, Germany, Israel, Japan, Sweden and Switzerland (Dafflon 2012;Hansen 2012;Hinnerich 2009;Reingewertz 2012;Weese 2013). However, a possible and somewhat overlooked cost of municipality mergers is that the merger process itself creates a temporary common pool problem among the municipalities who are about to merge.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Common pool problems in voluntary municipal mergers

Saarimaa

Tukiainen

2015

European Journal of Political Economy

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may AbstractWe analyse free-riding behaviour of Finnish municipalities prior to voluntary municipal mergers. The merger process creates a temporary common pool problem, because of a delay from the initial decision to the actual merger during which municipalities stay autonomous. Using a difference-indifferences strategy, we find that the stronger free-riding incentive a municipality faced the more it increased its debt and spent its cash reserves. These funds were spent mostly on investments and current expenditures. The results can be attributed to the "law of 1/n" rather than to responding to an anticipated loss of political power or voluntary transfers between merging municipalities.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Common pool problems in voluntary municipal mergers

Saarimaa

Tukiainen

2015

European Journal of Political Economy

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“…The dummy variable NEXT_ELECTION takes on the value 1 for all delegates who plan to run up again (0 else). Many scholars see the essential problem of IMC in its negative impact on accountability and citizens' political control and influence (e.g., Dafflon, 2012;Gjertsen, 2014). We ask delegates whether they expect IMC 6 Full correlation tables are available in the supplementary material.…”

Section: H1a (Facilitating Rent Extraction)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Local council members’ view on intermunicipal cooperation: does office-related self-interest matter?

Bergholz

Bischoff

2018

Regional Studies

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. AbstractWe analyze data from a survey among local council members in 59 German municipalities. We ask council members whether their home municipality should cooperate with neighboring municipalities in the provision of public services like childcare or road maintenance.Their answers are clearly driven by office-related self-interest. Council members who have more political power and thus have more power to lose if their home municipality cooperates are more likely oppose inter-municipal cooperation. This interpretation receives further backing by the fact that delegates' support for inter-municipal cooperation increases in the population size of their home municipality but decreases in the size of its neighbors. JEL:H77, D72

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“…The new demands have led to broad-scale reforms in administrative and operational structures in order to meet the future needs of service production and delivery (Wollman 2012). Amalgamations of municipalities are often means used in the reforms, but less strict forms of cooperation between the municipalities are also in use in different countries (e.g., Dafflon 2012;Slack & Bird 2012).…”

Section: The Context: Reforms In Municipalitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%