Local government amalgamation policy: A highway maintenance evaluation

by

“While new governance practices introduced contemporaneously lifted the level of performance of local authorities in terms of higher technical efficiency, there is no evidence that the amalgamation policy contributed to this improvement.”

Abstract: “Evaluating the effects of a change in public policy setting is a critical element in the chain of accountability. Factors such as effectiveness and efficiency in government operations are often difficult to measure. In this study of efficiency outcomes, we follow events before and after significant structural change arising from local authority amalgamation. The study focuses on highway maintenance and uses Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to evaluate whether greater efficiency was achieved.

Results (confined to highway management activities) show no evidence that amalgamation was justified in terms of diseconomies arising from smallness (i.e. increasing returns to scale). The policy impact evaluation methodology developed in this paper has potential for application to other local government service activities.”

Published in Management Accounting Research | P. Rouse | 2005 https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Local-government-amalgamation-policy%3A-A-highway-Rouse-Putterill/62cc142079176c756bce66655455bb74148728ae, https://consensus.app/details/while-governance-practices-introduced-rouse/41e89eba00e45cd5a3f416fcae2ab8a3/

Related posts:

  1. Improving Efficiency in Australian Local Government: Structural Reform as a Catalyst for Effective Reform “It is argued that ‘top-down’ state government structural reform policy initiatives carrying the threat of amalgamation constitute an efficient mechanism for evoking optimal ‘bottom-up’ structural change models.” Municipal amalgamation has been the main policy instrument of local government structural reform...
  2. Reconsidering Rationales for Local Self-Government – Impacts of Contemporary Changes in Local Decision-Making “The paper concludes that the well-established rationales for local self-government and local democracy need to be reconsidered by taking into account these new decision-making structures.” This paper discusses two contemporary trends in local decision-making. Firstly, there seems to be more...
  3. Structural Reform in Australian Local Government “Amalgamation has always been the favoured Australian policy instrument for improving the efficiency of Local government. However, this policy consensus has flown against mounting evidence that amalgamation not only often fails to reduce costs, but also generates significant unintended negative...
  4. Bigger but not always better: Size and democracy in Israeli amalgamated local governments “This study reveals that amalgamation reduces local democracy in terms of voter turnout and representation. The likelihood of having a greater level of local democracy increases in smaller local governments, in terms of population. “ “The new efficiency and democracy...
  5. The Effects of Local Government Amalgamation on Public Spending, Taxation, and Service Levels: Evidence from 15 Years of Municipal Consolidation “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...
  6. Devolution and the modernization of local government: Prospects for spatial planning “In England, by contrast, the new relationships between local government and central government appear more complex, not least as a result of the emerging picture of governance being brought about by regionalization. This leaves the future structure and powers of...
  7. Decentralization Policy in Ukraine: How Voluntary Amalgamation, Inter-Municipal Cooperation and Fiscal Incentives Impacted the Local Government System “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: The authors...
  8. ‘Devolution’ of transport powers to Local Government: Impacts of the 2004 Traffic Management Act in England “Overall, the results show that only some of these new powers are likely to be used by English Local Authorities, with limited variation in how different types of LTA are choosing to implement these new powers. The structured telephone interviews...
  9. The evidence on the existence of economies of scale in local government units “This does not imply that more extensive amalgamation is not warranted, but it demands that other arguments justifying municipal amalgamation should be presented.” The purpose of this paper is to empirically verify if the possible existence of scale economies actually...
  10. Leadership in local government reform : strategic direction versus administrative compliance “This paper reports on a study into the managerial and organizational responses to the reform of Victorian local government, highlighting the fact that each local authority is unique and that broad policy instruments designed to reform and improve local government...