The Consequences of Territorial Local Government Reforms

Abstract

Over the last decades, a wave of territorial local government reforms has swept Europe. From Scandinavia to Southern and Eastern Europe, reforms have redrawn the map of local government, often motivated by expectations of economies of scale by merging smaller units to larger ones. For such a widespread phenomenon, territorial local government reforms has undergone surprisingly little systematic evaluation. In this panel, the consequences of territorial local government reforms are discussed in a series of papers analyzing economic and democratic consequences in specific European countries and/or comparing the consequences across a number of countries. The papers span different types of territorial scale reforms, including not only amalgamation reforms but also fragmentation, intermunicipal cooperation and devolution of power to combined authorities.