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ABSTRACT
Many OECD countries have amalgamated their municipalities during the last couple of decades. For decisions concerning future territorial rescaling, it is crucial to augment the previously inconclusive evaluative knowledge of the effects of mergers. This paper examines the effects of amalgamations conducted between 1998 and 2009 in the areas of public service delivery, local finance, administrative staff, municipal autonomy and local democracy. The data are obtained from two comprehensive surveys of all local secretaries (top civil servants) in Switzerland in 1998 and 2009. The analysis – based upon a comparison between a quasi-experimental and a control group – (partially) supports the hypothesis of a positive effect on public service delivery, the professionalization of staff and municipal autonomy. The effect on local finance is inconclusive, and negative effects on local democracy are not discovered in the framework of this study.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. In this paper, the term ‘amalgamation’ is used as a synonym for the term ‘merger’. When a municipal merger occurs, one or more municipalities cease to exist. Either all amalgamating municipalities abandon their existence to merge with a new municipality, or one or more municipalities join an existing municipality. The essential trait of a merger is the complete surrender of independence by one or several municipalities. All municipal tasks are fulfilled by the new municipality (Steiner Citation2003).
2. In metropolitan governance research, ‘new regionalism’ is concerned with so-called soft institutions, which interact through a variety of factors (Kübler and Heinelt Citation2005). This school of thought, however, is not examined in further detail here because it is beyond the scope of this paper.
3. The concepts of inputs, processes, outputs as well as the distinction between outputs and outcomes have been well analysed in more detail elsewhere (see, for example, Poister Citation2003; Pollitt and Bouckaert Citation2011).
4. However, more specialization often also requires new coordination mechanism (see, for example, Pollitt and Bouckaert Citation2011).
5. It is also argued that different public services require different scales of organization (see, for example, Ostrom, Tiebout, and Warren Citation1961: 831).
6. The occasional mergers that have been implemented by force largely constituted a small number of municipalities in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland (Fetz Citation2009: 153).
7. Permanent residents by 31 December 2013.
8. The study refers exclusively to mergers of political municipalities and excludes other types of communities, such as single-task communes (e.g., school municipalities).
9. The average size of the observed old municipalities is 1,368, compared to 609 if all old municipalities would have been observed.
10. Using population size as a proxy for municipal output has been criticized because municipalities with similar population size may have different characteristics regarding demography, economy and society and the population density is not taken into account (Drew, Kortt, and Dollery Citation2013). Therefore, for the selection of the matched control group, we do not only consider population size, but also the type of the municipality (see note below).
11. The typology of municipalities according to the Federal Statistical Office (FSO), based on a centre-periphery model, classifies the Swiss municipalities into nine main types. The criteria are commuting movements, employment situation, housing, wealth, tourism, population and the function as a centre. The resulting nine main types of municipalities are centres, suburban, high-income, peri-urban, touristic, industrial and tertiary, rural commuting, agrarian-mixed and agrarian municipalities (Federal Statistical Office (FSO) Citation2014b).
12. This represents the assessment of the municipal secretaries of the performance of their own municipality in various tasks areas (see Appendix 1 for the exact phrasing of the survey question). ‘No performance limits (PL) visible’ means that from the perspective of the municipal secretary, the municipality performs well in the correspondent task area. ‘PL in sight’ means that some problems are expected, but they are not unsolvable and not a matter of urgency. ‘PL reached’ implies that the situation is hazardous and could cause major problems if they are not addressed urgently, and ‘PL exceeded’ indicates a situation that has already become uncontrollable.
13. The capital spending proportion is the gross investment in the percentage of consolidated spending, and it describes the extent of the municipalities’ investment activities. Values below 10 per –cent are considered weak investment activity, and values above 20 per cent are considered strong investment activity. The self-financing level is defined as self-financing in the percentage of net investments. This level describes the extent to which the investments are financed by self-earned means. In the long term, values should be above 100 per cent because a self-financing level below 100 per cent leads to new debts. Values below 70 per cent are considered problematic. The consolidated gross debt share is the consolidated debt in the percentage of the financial yield. Values below 100 per cent are considered healthy, values above 150 per cent are considered bad and values above 200 per cent are considered critical. These three indicators in combination allow us to assess the financial performance of municipalities insofar as a high capital spending proportion is critical when self-financial levels are low because the consolidated gross debt share then rises. A high self-financing level is not a good sign when a municipality makes few investments (Avenir Suisse Citation2012, 68).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Reto Steiner
Reto Steiner is a member of the management board at the Center of Competence for Public Management at the University of Bern and a professor at the Free University of Bozen. He has been a Visiting Research Fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2013. His specialties include the management of agencies, state-owned enterprises, decentralization and local governance.
Claire Kaiser
Claire Kaiser is a PostDoc researcher at the Center of Competence for Public Management at the University of Bern. Her specialties include local governance and public management.