Academic Avenues

“Recent policy shifts and budget cuts have led to a reduction in government support for NGOs. While studies examine funding at the federal level, few analyze municipalities. Using a socio-spatial approach, we compare municipal funding and tax relief with Census data to analyze how fiscal support coincides with social needs in Halifax, Canada.

Our analysis shows that funding declines while the need remains high. We contend this has implications for the ability of organizations to provide services to vulnerable populations and communities as cities shift social support responsibilities to the private sector and municipal governments adopt austerity policies.”

Max Stick, Howard Ramos | Dec 24 2019 | Economics, Political Science, Sociology | Urban Research & Practice, https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Does-municipal-funding-of-organizations-reflect-of-Stick-Ramos/5da4b4d534060ff1a066e87b88e100af202e4b37

“This paper examines the progress of implementing a comprehensive decentralization program in Ukraine. Ukraine was practically the last country of the former Soviet bloc to undertake a comprehensive decentralization program. The decentralization program was based on three pillars:

1. a reliance on voluntary amalgamation of the local government units,
2. the use of inter-municipal cooperation, and
3. enhanced financial incentives.

The authors examine how these policies were implemented as well as the impact on local governments service delivery and fiscal capacity. The analyses are based on available data and the application of statistical tests measuring fiscal resources to the population size and other variables of the local government.

The study has revealed some significant flaws in Ukrainian decentralization policy implementation. The voluntary approach eventually had to be abandoned for a mandatory approach. The weak progress in inter-municipal cooperation did not establish improved service delivery across a large number of local government units. The financial incentives with greater sharing of taxes did not provide sufficient additional resources to make the units financially sustainable. Finally, the results of the local government elections held in the amalgamated units did not reveal widespread support for the new units and the decentralization reforms. These issues create significant risks for the final success of the decentralization reform.”

Glen Wright, S. Slukhai | May 12 2021 | Economics, Political Science | NISPAcee Journal of Public Administration and Policy, https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Decentralization-Policy-in-Ukraine%3A-How-Voluntary-Wright-Slukhai/f7f4c7f52283e2430d6af452b8ce37a371810492

“In 2007, the Queensland Government imposed forced amalgamation with the number of local authorities falling from 157 to just 73 councils. Amalgamation was based inter alia on the assumption that increased economies of scale would generate savings. This paper empirically examines pre- and post-amalgamation (2006/07 and 2009/10) for scale economies. For the 2006/07 data, evidence of economies of scale was found for councils with populations up to 98,000, and thereafter diseconomies of scale. Eight percent of councils in 2006/07 (ten councils) – representing 64% of the state’s population – exhibited diseconomies of scale.

For the 2009/10 data, the average cost curve remained almost stationary at 99,000 residents per council, but almost 25% of all councils (thirteen councils) were now found to exhibit diseconomies of scale. The compulsory merger program thus increased the proportion of Queensland residents in councils operating with diseconomies of scale to 84%.”

J. Drew, M. Kortt, B. Dollery | Jan 2 2016 | Economics | Local Government Studies, https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Did-the-Big-Stick-Work-An-Empirical-Assessment-of-Drew-Kortt/a608a731eabca98b4bfadb1190d3d681214ebec8

“In recent decades, the belief that larger municipalities can better capture economies of scale led to compulsory amalgamations in several countries. This article examines such a program of compulsory amalgamations in Ontario, Canada, during the late 1990s and early 2000s. By exogenously deciding on a course of municipal restructuring, and leaving a large comparison group of nonamalgamated municipalities within the same institutional framework, the Ontario reforms created a quasi-experiment on the importance of scale for local government.

Using a difference-in-differences methodological approach, this article exploits the quasi-experimental setting of the Ontario reforms to examine the causal effect of jurisdiction size on the cost of local administration. The main empirical finding in this article is that increasing local jurisdiction size reduces the cost of local administration. The results provide the most convincing evidence to date that economies of scale exist in local administration and can be captured through consolidation.”

Timothy W. Cobban | Mar 1 2019 | Political Science | Urban Affairs Review, https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Bigger-Is-Better%3A-Reducing-the-Cost-of-Local-by-in-Cobban/5a36d869b38f56ec9f95d7993a674d40bd33e907

“Notwithstanding a lack of interest by cost-cutting governments in Britain and the United States, municipal consolidation has emerged in at least three Canadian provinces – New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Ontario – as a significant government priority. There is no academic evidence to suggest that consolidation produces savings. Government reports in New Brunswick have tended to point more to non-financial benefits from consolidation, but the creation of the single-tier Halifax Regional Municipality in Nova Scotia has been justified primarily in terms of projected cost savings.

In Ontario, the “Common Sense Revolution” commits the government to reducing overlap and duplication but not necessarily to consolidation. A ministry study of one Ontario municipal amalgamation purports to demonstrate savings, but the conclusions are questionable. The report of the task force on the Greater Toronto Area is significant because it specifically rejects claims that lower-tier amalgamations will save money and because it points to the benefits of municipal competition. Reducing the number of municipal governments does not necessarily mean less government.”

Andrew Sancton | Sep 1 1996 | Political Science | Canadian Public Administration, https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Reducing-costs-by-consolidating-municipalities%3A-New-Sancton/f2234be2c029dd49911ee16d79583631dc978e66

“The proposition that a decentralized structure of local governments can effectively constrain public sector growth is empirically investigated. Data on Swedish municipal sector size for the 1942–87 period are analyzed within the context of a median voter model.

The results indicate that decentralization, measured by the number of units of local government serving a given population, constrains the influence of institutional factors (e.g., rent seeking, bureaucracy) on local budgets as long as these units exceed some minimal threshold size. The findings support the view that communities should be given the flexibility to determine their own ideal pattern of local governments.”

M. A. Nelson | Feb 1 1992 | Political Science | Journal of Regional Science, https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/MUNICIPAL-AMALGAMATION-AND-THE-GROWTH-OF-THE-LOCAL-Nelson/f51195aad1f54a4907a56531cda65002128fb4a7

“We study how municipal amalgamation affects local government spending, taxation, and service provision in the Netherlands. Employing different models, different control groups, and a number of robustness tests, we find no significant effect on aggregate spending or taxation, although spending on administration is reduced.

We explore whether this finding might hide amalgamation effects working in opposite directions for different types of municipalities (e.g., small versus large, or homogeneous versus heterogeneous), cancelling each other out. This does not seem to be the case. We also investigate whether amalgamation leads to better public services instead of lower spending, but find no evidence.”

M. Allers, J. Geertsema | Sep 1 2016 | Economics | Urban Research eJournal, https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Effects-of-Local-Government-Amalgamation-on-and-Allers-Geertsema/e8c55ab3956ae99601b02b61d796c76a348251b5

“Across the developed world, the last 50 years have seen a dramatic wave of municipal mergers, often motivated by a quest for economies of scale. Re-examining the theoretical arguments invoked to justify these reforms, we find that, in fact, there is no compelling reason to expect them to yield net gains. Potential savings in, for example, administrative costs are likely to be offset by opposite effects for other domains.

Past attempts at empirical assessment have been bedeviled by endogeneity—which municipalities amalgamate is typically nonrandom—creating a danger of bias. We exploit the particular characteristics of a recent Danish reform to provide more credible difference-in-differences estimates of the effect of mergers.

The result turns out to be null: cost savings in some areas were offset by deterioration in others, while for most public services jurisdiction size did not matter at all. Given significant transition costs, the finding raises questions about the rationale behind a global movement that has already restructured local government on almost all continents. “

J. Blom‐Hansen, K. Houlberg, Søren Serritzlew, D. Treisman less | Nov 1 2016 | Economics, Political Science | American Political Science Review, https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Jurisdiction-Size-and-Local-Government-Policy-the-Blom%E2%80%90Hansen-Houlberg/47d27ad64355de6abf9edaf64bc4208a8e303204

“Following a critique of the current local governance arrangements in the greater Sydney metropolitan area by Blakely and Hu (2007), an alternative approach to the status quo has been advocated in Governance Arrangements for Sydney’s Local Government Authorities (KPMG, 2008). This approach is aimed at rescaling local governance in Sydney to achieve greater global competitiveness, secure better communities of interest, and ensure long-run financial sustainability.

The analysis in this Report has formed the basis for policy proposals calling for inter alia a ‘reconfiguration’ of small local councils in the Sydney metropolitan area into larger units. This paper seeks to provide a critical evaluation of Governance Arrangements for Sydney’s Local Government Authorities. It demonstrates that the empirical analysis conducted in this Report does not support the policy conclusions drawn by its authors for the amalgamation of small councils into larger municipalities. Moreover, the paper argues that the Report should have employed different arguments to those it invoked in support of the establishment of a regional authority for greater Sydney.”

Published in The Australasian Journal of Regional Studies | B. Dollery | 2012, https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/RUNNING-THE-BIG-SMOKE%3A-A-CRITICAL-ANALYSIS-OF-THE-Dollery-Fiorillo/d9f97978efae8d975c3c2dc6ce418b5e1e1e60e3, https://consensus.app/details/demonstrates-analysis-conducted-report-support-policy-dollery/de111f6eb51457779e090a65f2ad9036/