Municipal Reforms in Montreal and the Issue of Fairness

by

“Municipal governance in the Montreal metropolitan region has recently undergone several phases of transformation. The first, in 2001-2002, was characterized by amalgamation and the introduction of a metropolitan governance structure. This was followed, in 2006, by a round of de-amalgamation.

Using annual municipal data on residential tax base and global tax rate covering the period from 1996 to 2011 for all municipalities of the metropolitan area, the impacts of these reforms on fairness are estimated. Our findings show that amalgamation raises equity among municipalities and that de-amalgamation partly reintroduced inequity in the metropolitan area.”

Published in Canadian Journal of Urban Research | J. Meloche | 2018, https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Municipal-Reforms-in-Montreal-and-the-Issue-of-Meloche-Leblanc-Desgagn%C3%A9/2016ca2dc50f5bda38fd3b072f2e2ff15dbd6d43, https://consensus.app/details/findingsshow-amalgamation-raises-equity-among-meloche/e72eabc2c3cc5ad7a2c7ee5077ced0e2/



Related posts:

  1. Municipal incorporation in the United States “Main findings are that income heterogeneity raises the probability of municipal incorporation and state restrictions on local government autonomy lower that probability.” This article empirically examines the formation of municipalities in the USA. It traces change in unincorporated areas over...
  2. How Coerced Municipal Amalgamations Thwart the Values of Local Self-Government “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...
  3. Municipal Preferences for State-imposed Amalgamations: An Empirical Study Based on the Swedish Municipal Reform of 1952 “This paper concerns municipal preferences for state-imposed municipal amalgamations, focusing on factors that may explain municipal acceptance of, or objection to, a state-imposed amalgamation decision. The empirical analysis is based on the extensive municipal reform that occurred in Sweden in...
  4. The Political Economy of Municipal Amalgamation – Evidence of Common Pool Effects and Local Public Debt “By exploiting the huge variance in the amalgamation process in terms of number of participating municipalities, municipality size or amalgamation strategy we identify considerable common pool effects. Amalgamations can create a common pool, as the former independent municipalities have now...
  5. Municipal amalgamations and their effects: a literature review “Despite the significant variation across countries and reforms, some regularities emerge: cost savings being primarily limited to general administration expenditures (wages, office supplies, and so on), few changes in the quality of local services, and the diminished quality of local...
  6. 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...
  7. A Procedure for the Ex-Ante Assessment of Compulsory Municipal Amalgamation Programs “The main result is that amalgamation policies based only on the a priori rule that small municipalities should merge may be very inefficient because the expenditure reduction following an amalgamation policy may depend to a considerable extent on other territorial...
  8. Why voluntary municipal merger projects fail: evidence from popular votes in Switzerland “What determines the failure of local government amalgamation referenda? Existing research suggests that functional pressures act as a push factor towards local territorial reform, whereas considerations of political self-determination exert a pull effect. However, we know little about the respective...
  9. The Political Economy of Municipal Amalgamation – Evidence of Common Pool Effects and Local Public Debt “This paper investigates the political economy of after merger effects of the large scale municipal amalgamations in the German state of Baden-Wurttemberg in the early 1970s. By exploiting the huge variance in the amalgamation process in terms of number of...
  10. Introduction: Comparing Local Public Sector Reforms: Institutional Policies in Context “…other-than-NPM measures” such as territorial reforms, functional re-allocations in the multi-level system, and democratic innovations have played an important role in many European local government systems. These diverse reform activities have contributed to transforming local government systems and patterns of...