The impact of municipal territorial reforms on the economic performance of local governments. A systematic review of quasi-experimental studies

ABSTRACT

Recent years have brought increasing number of publications empirically assessing outcomes of territorial reforms. This paper provides a systematic review of 31 studies from 14 countries, using quasi-experimental research designs to test the causal relationship between changes in jurisdiction size and economic outcomes. The clearly confirmed finding relates to savings in administrative spending, while other sectors do not demonstrate economies of scale. The existing studies provide strong evidence for the common pool effect in theperiod before amalgamation. In the other fields, results do not display a clear pattern. The article concludes with a discussion of gaps in the literature.

KEYWORDS:

• Local government
• territorial reforms
• municipal amalgamation
• quasi-experimental methods

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In two cases we refer to studies published online before the end of 2018, which were subsequently published in printed issues of the journal in 2019 (in the list of references they appear as published in 2019).

2 The element most frequently lacking was pre-treatment analysis (e.g. Hanes, 2015; Dollery & Ting, 2017).

3 As Swianiewicz (2010, p. 201) noted, ‘the difference between bottom-up voluntary change and reform implemented in a top-down manner is not very sharp’. Compulsory reforms usually leave some discretion for local governments; voluntary reforms frequently employ powerful incentives – Strebel (2019) claims also that until the end of the 20th century most amalgamation reforms were top-down, and the larger role of voluntary mergers appeared during the last two decades only.

4 Some of the articles use more than one method, which is why the sum of used methods exceeds the number of articles considered.

5 A model for such a meta-study, which has been possible due to larger number of replicable methodological designs applied in different contexts, might be provided by the recent analysis of the impact of inter-municipal cooperation on costs of service delivery performed by Bel and Sebő (2019). The authors of that study find the circumstances under which the likelihood of such savings statistically increases.

6 As Reingewertz and Serritzlew (2019) note the issue of the impact of absolute size on economies of scale may be investigated by studies of amalgamations implemented on the county level (which are, by definition, larger than municipalities). However, they note that such studies are very rare, and examples of county reform studies using quasi-experimental designs are even more difficult to find. Last but not least, additional difficulty arises– as Swianiewicz and Łukomska (2019) note –because the difference between the consequences observed as a result of similar reforms on the municipal and county level may be not only due to the different population sizes of those jurisdictions, but also due to different functions and different levels of embeddedness in local communities.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Narodowe Centrum Nauki: [Grant Number 2017/26/M/HS5/00152].

Notes on contributors

Adam Gendźwiłł

Adam Gendźwiłł is an Assistant Professor of political science and human geography at the University of Warsaw. He works in the Department of Local Development and Policy at the Faculty of Geography and Regional Studies. His research interests focus on local elections, local democracy and territorial reforms.

Anna Kurniewicz

Anna Kurniewicz is a PhD student in the Department of Local Development and Policy, Faculty of Geography and Regional Studies, University of Warsaw. Her research interests focus on local government and urban development.

Paweł Swianiewicz

Paweł Swianiewicz is a Professor of economics at the University of Warsaw, Head of the Department of Local Development and Policy at the Faculty of Geography and Regional Studies, and Head of the Doctoral School of Social Sciences. From 2005 to 2010, he was a President of the Board of the European Urban Research Association (EURA). Currently, he is a member of the Steering Committee of the Standing Group on Local Government and Politics of the ECPR. His research focuses on comparative study of local government systems, territorial reforms, and local government finance.