Academic Avenues

“First, the city–county mergers significantly reduce the environmental pollution of merged cities. The robustness tests support this conclusion.

Second, the effects of city–county mergers on environmental pollution control decrease with the increase in geographical distance between the merged cities and counties; the smaller the differences in economic strength of merged cities and counties, the better the coordinated control of environmental pollution; the environmental governance effects of merged cities in the eastern region are lower than those in the central and western regions.

Third, by intensifying the vertical management of urban environmental protection agencies, unified urban planning and fiscal centralization, the city–county mergers can strengthen the overall environmental governance capabilities of merged cities, reduce the negative effects of urbanization, and ultimately improve the environmental quality.”

Green and high-quality development is the focus of China’s urban development strategy in the new era. The city–county merger policy has been one of several powerful tools used by the Chinese government to promote urbanization in recent decades, but whether and how it influences the environment has been rarely discussed. Using the multi-period difference-in-differences method and urban panel datasets, we investigated the environmental effects of the city–county merger policy in China from 2000–2016 and obtained the following results.

Published in Sustainability | Zhiying Cao | 2022 https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Environmental-Effects-of-City%E2%80%93County-Mergers-in-or-Cao-Wang/3d7e8ec92fdca559455e828408bc4a0fc4a2c2c3

“The results indicate that, after controlling for other factors, city-county mergers have increased the quality of public services by 1.2%. A placebo test has validated the robustness of this positive effect. Through further tests, the paper finds that the policy has positively affected all three aspects of the quality of public services in China: education, health care, and transport infrastructure, with the greatest impact being on education.”

Municipal amalgamation is one of the core policy tools for Chinese government intervention in urbanization. The city-county merger policy provides a valuable research object for examining whether government-led urban expansion improves the quality of public services. By using city panel data from 2003 to 2019, this paper examines the policy effects of city-county mergers on the quality of public services using the Propensity Score Matching-Difference-in-Differences (PSM-DID) model.

Using a case study of a city-county merger in the Fenghua District of Ningbo, this paper depicts the transmission mechanism and argues that the policy affects the quality of public services by providing institutional security (financial and administrative power) and promoting regional integration in the new city area.

Published in PLoS ONE | Zi-Ying Mao | 2022 https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Municipal-amalgamations-and-the-quality-of-public-A-Mao-Wang/22103d772f64ece2c767a28ec622d8b8fda3dfc4

“After controlling for potential confounding factors, the analysis shows that municipal merger is negatively correlated to legislative performance.”

Municipal mergers have been widely used as a tool for administrative reform. The goal of most municipal mergers is to increase the efficiency of service provision, but their impact on local democracy has been neglected. In particular, little is known as to how mergers affect performance of local legislatures. In filling these gaps, this study uses a dataset of 754 Japanese city-level governments from 2008 to 2014 to examine how mergers influence legislative performance. 

Published in Lex localis – Journal of Local Self-Government | Kohei Suzuki | 2018, https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Municipal-Merger-and-Local-Democracy%3A-An-Assessment-Suzuki-Ha/a899d75e2fdde5bfb6e470844e7a918be04d834b

“The authors conclude that little empirical research exists to suggest that city–county consolidations actually increase efficiency, promote economic development, or increase equity.”

This essay explores city–county consolidations and the extent of alignment between the advantages promised by consolidation advocates and the performance of such government structures. Peer-reviewed research specifically bearing on city–county consolidations is presented together with supporting research on the consolidation of local governments in general. The performance of such consolidations is evaluated on three dimensions: efficiency in service delivery, promotion of economic development, and increased equity in terms of urban/suburban disparities and the impact on ethnic minority representation.

Published in State and Local Government Review | Lawrence L. Martin | 2011, https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/City%E2%80%93County-Consolidations-Martin-Schiff/dc6c65aacbea869a566dbd4dba5c398904c83715

” This study offers evidence of greater efficiency and reduced costs in general government or administrative services when the consolidation occurs in a relatively small county.

Based on an analysis of real operating expenditures in the United Government of Athens-Clarke County, Georgia and in three comparison governments, this research finds that overall expenditures increased over time but that there were cost savings in some but not necessarily all functions and departments.

Moreover, the analysis suggests that there is nothing intrinsic in the act of consolidation that will guarantee more efficient operations. Like other governmental reforms, city-county consolidation offers the potential for economies of scale or size but governmental costs are contingent on the policy decisions of the elected commission, the management initiatives of key professional staff, and the constraints imposed on policy-makers and managers by provisions in the consolidated governments’ charter.”

Urban reformers and proponents of city-county consolidation claim that consolidated governments reduce costs and deliver services more efficiently. This claim is largely unsubstantiated with the little empirical evidence indicating that expenditures tend to increase after a governmental consolidation.

Published in Public Administration Quarterly | Sally Selden | 2016, https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/THE-EXPENDITURE-IMPACTS-OF-UNIFICATION-IN-A-SMALL-A-Selden-Campbell/cf61a75963f6765618045b151ff615ffd76234de

This is a provocative question, who has the authority to create local government, where do the powers to institute local government come from, what authorizes their creation and dissolution?

“This article challenges the standard idea that municipalities are creatures of the provinces, and suggests instead that they embody one of the major principles of a free and democratic society, the right of local self-government. Municipalities are political authorities of a different sort, which may coexist with the state but are not strictly part of it.

Local self-government is a practice rooted in everyday life, and there is more to it than just having municipal authorities. Canadians have yet to have a proper debate about the constitutional implications of giving appropriate recognition to this practice.”

W. Magnusson | Feb 1 2005 | Political Science | Journal of Canadian Studies/Revue d’études canadiennes, https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Are-Municipalities-Creatures-of-the-Provinces-Magnusson/1f82644424445e3484f16a00d3b6ed9ffe484fa6

“It has been shown in this study that an increase in price will create a reduction in the cubic meters of water consumed per customer in a significant way. However it also shows that consumers are very price inelastic when it comes to the consumption of water and it will take a large change in price for consumers to alter their consumption patterns. It has also been shown in this study that as employment increases water consumption increases albeit in an insignificant manner.”

K. White | 2011 | Environmental Science, https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Municipal-water-consumption-patterns-of-Halifax%2C-White/8e9ee46d49d944e9357f08c65c31aed1a0aee36d

“Structural reorganization using municipal mergers is a common form of local government reform. This chapter examines both the theoretical literature and associated empirical work on council consolidation. After briefly discussing the magnitude of amalgamation across the world, this chapter considers the various schools of thought on council consolidation before examining specific dimensions of local government, including scale economies, scope economies, interjurisdictional spillovers, economic development, administrative and strategic capacity and local democracy.

Given the various theoretical expectations of the impact of amalgamation, this chapter then considers available empirical evidence on scale and scope economies, interjurisdictional externalities, economic growth, administrative capacity as well as local democracy. This chapter ends by concluding that the weight of empirical evidence indicates that municipal mergers have not met anticipations.”

B. Dollery, H. Kitchen, M. McMillan, Anwar Shah | 2020 | Economics, https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Structural-Reform%3A-Municipal-Mergers-Dollery-Kitchen/78e43ff63740d6910e3c29907dc3f29756d3a144

“A series of municipal amalgamations that took place in the 1990s in Ontario, which were justified as a means to “reduce the size of government and to promote economic development” (Sancton, 2000). However, it is unclear if the latter goal has been met. This paper will discuss the impact of amalgamation on economic development using the Chatham-Kent experience as a case study.

An analysis of the impacts reveals that the amalgamation process was tumultuous and resulted in a loss of significant institutional intelligence. However, it also forced the new entity to review its economic development approach; the investment in strategy development, resource mapping, information technology support and infrastructure has resulted in stronger support provided to the business community.”

A. Murray | 2006 | Economics, https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Municipal-amalgamation%3A-The-impact-on-economic-in-Murray/af890bfe32082c7471511278ef41805abad4ba0c

“Arguments invoking increased functional efficiency have had a profound impact on local government reforms in advanced democracies during the past 60 years. Consequently, most mature democracies have implemented municipal amalgamation reforms, often through top-down coercion. In this article, we demonstrate how far central governments have been willing to go, in terms of coercion, by providing an in-depth historical account of Swedish municipal amalgamations between 1952 and 1974.

Debates on amalgamation reforms have typically revolved around pros and cons of mergers. But very few discussions have addressed the more fundamental moral problem of enforcing amalgamations through coercion. Often, large-scale mergers are carried through against the expressed will of municipalities who wish to remain self-governing. In this article, we present a normative defense of strong local self-government, based partly on values of individual autonomy, and partly on group-based human rights, and we show how coerced amalgamations are at odds with these values.”

Gissur Ó. Erlingsson, Jörgen Ödalen, Erik Wångmar | Published 20 May 2020 | Political Science | Urban Affairs Review, https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/How-Coerced-Municipal-Amalgamations-Thwart-the-of-Erlingsson-%C3%96dalen/b824cab2bcd2ee1f727b9eb2ed6d1e939fa8a9a9