Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-17T14:58:11.216Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

I Don't Care to Belong to Any Club That Will Have Me as a Member: Empirical Analysis of Municipal Mergers*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2013

Tuukka Saarimaa  and
Janne Tukiainen
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The efficiency of local public goods provision and the functioning of local democracy crucially depend on the size and number of local jurisdictions. This article empirically analyzes voluntary municipal mergers in Finland. Our main focus is on aspects that have been somewhat neglected in prior empirical work: whether local democracy considerations, representation and voter preferences are involved in shaping the resulting municipal structure. The main results imply that some municipalities are forced to merge due to fiscal pressure and have to trade off political power to be accepted by their partners. The study also finds that the median voter's distance from services matters, while population size does not. The latter, somewhat surprising, observation is possibly explained by existing municipal co-operation, which already exhausts potential economies of scale.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Political Science Research and Methods , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , April 2014 , pp. 97 - 117
Copyright
Copyright © The European Political Science Association 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*Tuukka Saarimaa is Senior Researcher, Government Institute for Economic Research VATT, Arkadiankatu 7, P.O. Box 1279, FI-00101 Helsinki, Finland (tuukka.saarimaa@vatt.fi) and Janne Tukiainen is Senior Researcher, Government Institute for Economic Research VATT, Arkadiankatu 7, P.O. Box 1279, FI-00101 Helsinki, Finland (janne.tukiainen@vatt.fi) and Research Fellow, Helsinki Center of Economic Research (HECER). The authors would like to thank Essi Eerola, Elias Einiö, Olle Folke, Ronny Freier, Ari Hyytinen, Aki Kangasharju, Kaisa Kotakorpi, Jani-Petri Laamanen, Teemu Lyytikäinen, Antti Moisio, Henry Overman, Gerard Padró i Miquel, Rohini Pande, Jaakko Pehkonen, Torsten Persson, Heikki Pursiainen, Matti Sarvimäki, Otto Toivanen, Eric Weese, anonymous referees and seminar and conference participants at EPCS 2010, FEAAM-Tampere 2010, HECER, Jyväskylä, LSE, Manchester, Oxford and VATT for useful comments and discussions. Oskari Harjunen and Niklas Jahnsson provided excellent research assistance. Janne Tukiainen is grateful to the Emil Aaltonen Foundation, Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation, and the Yrjö Jahnsson Foundation for financial support and STICERD at the London School of Economics and Political Science for hospitality. Tuukka Saarimaa is grateful to the Finnish Cultural Foundation for financial support and SERC at the London School of Economics and Political Science for hospitality. We also thank the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra for funding.

References

Alesina, AlbertoSpolaore, Enrico. 1997. ‘On the Number and Size of Nations’. Quarterly Journal of Economics 112(4):1027–1056.Google Scholar
Alesina, AlbertoSpolaore, Enrico. 2003. The Size of Nations. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alesina, Alberto, Baqir, RezaHoxby, Caroline. 2004. ‘Political Jurisdictions in Heterogeneous Communities’. Journal of Political Economy 112(2):348–396.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baron, David P.Ferejohn, John A.. 1987. ‘Bargaining and Agenda Formation in Legislatures’. American Economic Review 77(2):303–309.Google Scholar
Baron, David P.Ferejohn, John A.. 1989. ‘Bargaining in Legislatures’. American Political Science Review 83(4):1181–1206.Google Scholar
Bhatti, YosefHansen, Kasper N.. 2011. ‘Who “Marries” Whom? The Influence of Societal Connectedness, Economic and Political Homogeneity, and Population Size on Jurisdictional Consolidations’. European Journal of Political Research 50(2):212–238.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blais, Andre, Lachat, Romain, Hino, AiroDoray-Demers, Pascal. 2011. ‘The Mechanical and Psychological Effects of Electoral Systems: A Quasi-experimental Study’. Comparative Political Studies 44(12):1599–1621.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bolton, PatrickRoland, Gerard. 1997. ‘The Breakup of Nations: A Political Economy Analysis’. Quarterly Journal of Economics 112(4):1057–1090.Google Scholar
Brasington, David. 1999. ‘Joint Provision of Public Goods: The Consolidation of School Districts’. Journal of Public Economics 73(3):373–393.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brasington, David. 2003a. ‘Size and School District Consolidation: Do Opposites Attract?’ Economica 70(280):673–690.Google Scholar
Brasington, David. 2003b. ‘Snobbery, Racism, or Mutual Distaste: What Promotes and Hinders Cooperation in Local Public-Good Provision?’ Review of Economics and Statistics 85(4):874–883.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Breslow, Norman E. 1996. ‘Statistics in Epidemiology: The Case-Control Study’. Journal of the American Statistical Association 91(433):14–28.Google Scholar
Cram, Donald P., Karan, VijayStuart, Iris. 2010. ‘Three Threats to Validity of Choice-based and Matched-Sample Studies in Accounting Research’. Contemporary Accounting Research 26(2):477–516.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dahl, Robert A.Tufte, Edward R.. 1973. Size and Democracy. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Ellingsen, Tore. 1998. ‘Externalities vs Internalities: A Model of Political Integration’. Journal of Public Economics 68(2):251–268.Google Scholar
Gordon, NoraKnight, Brian. 2009. ‘A Spatial Merger Estimator with an Application to School District Consolidation’. Journal of Public Economics 93(5–6):752–765.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hansen, Sune W. 2013. ‘Polity Size and Local Political Trust: A Quasi-experiment Using Municipal Mergers in Denmark’. Scandinavian Political Studies 36(1):43–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoyt, William H. 1991. ‘Property Taxation, Nash Equilibrium, and Market Power’. Journal of Urban Economics 30(1):123–131.Google Scholar
Hyytinen, Ari, Saarimaa, Tuukka, Tukiainen, Janne. 2013. ‘Seat Competitiveness and Redistricting: Evidence from Voting on Municipal Mergers’. VATT Working Paper 38. Helsinki: Government Institute for Economic Research.Google Scholar
Imbens, Guido. 1992. ‘The Efficient Method of Moments Estimator for Discrete Choice Models with Choice-Based Sampling’. Econometrica 60(5):1187–1214.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
King, GaryZeng, Lanche. 2001. ‘Logistic Regression in Rare Events Data’. Political Analysis 9:137–163.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knight, Brian. 2005. ‘Estimating the Value of Proposal Power’. American Economic Review 95(5):1639–1652.Google Scholar
Lassen, David D.Serritzlew, Søren. 2011. ‘Jurisdiction Size and Local Democracy: Evidence on Internal Efficacy from Large-scale Municipal Reform’. American Political Science Review 105(2):238–258.Google Scholar
Manski, Charles F. 2013. ‘Identification of Treatment Response with Social Interactions’. Econometrics Journal 16(1):S1–S23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Manski, Charles F.Lerman, Steven R.. 1977. ‘The Estimation of Choice Probabilities from Choice Based Samples’. Econometrica 45(8):1977–1988.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miceli, Thomas J. 1993. ‘The Decision to Regionalize in the Provision of Education: An Application of the Tiebout Model’. Journal of Urban Economics 33(3):344–360.Google Scholar
Moisio, Antti, Loikkanen, Heikki A., Oulasvirta, Lasse. 2010. ‘Public Services at the Local Level – The Finnish Way’. VATT Policy Reports 2. Helsinki: Government Institute for Economic Research.Google Scholar
Mouritzen, Poul Erik. 1989. ‘City Size and Citizens’ Satisfaction: Two Competing Theories Revisited’. European Journal of Political Research 17(6):661–688.Google Scholar
Oates, Wallace E. 1999. ‘An Essay on Fiscal Federalism’. Journal of Economic Literature 37:1120–1149.Google Scholar
Oliver, J. Eric. 2000. ‘City Size and Civic Involvement in Metropolitan America’. American Political Science Review 94(2):361–373.Google Scholar
Poirier, Dale. 1980. ‘Partial Observability in Bivariate Probit Models’. Journal of Econometrics 12(2):209–217.Google Scholar
Ray, DebrajVohra, Rajiv. 1997. ‘Equilibrium Binding Agreements’. Journal of Economic Theory 73(1):30–78.Google Scholar
Revelli, Federico. 2005. ‘On Spatial Public Finance Empirics’. International Tax and Public Finance 12(4):475–492.Google Scholar
Rubin, Donald. 1978. ‘Estimating Causal Effects of Treatments in Randomized and Nonrandomized Studies’. Journal of Educational Psychology 66(5):688–701.Google Scholar
Tanguay, Georges A.Wihry, David F.. 2008. ‘Voters’ Preferences Regarding Municipal Consolidation: Evidence from the Quebec De-Merger Referenda’. Journal Urban Affairs 30(3):325–345.Google Scholar
Tiebout, Charles M. 1956. ‘A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures’. Journal of Political Economy 64(5):416–424.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Treisman, Daniel. 2007. The Architecture of Government. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Verba, SidneyNie, Norman H.. 1972. Participation in America: Political Democracy and Social Equality. Chicago: The Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Weese, Eric. 2011. ‘Political Mergers as Coalition Formation’. Discussion Paper 997. Yale University: Economic Growth Center.Google Scholar
Weingast, Barry R., Shepsle, Kenneth A.Johnsen, Christopher. 1981. ‘The Political Economy of Benefits and Costs: A Neoclassical Approach to Distributive Politics’. Journal of Political Economy 89(4):642–664.Google Scholar
Wernicke, Sebastian. 2006. ‘Efficient Detection of Network Motifs’. IEEE/ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics 3(4):347–359.Google Scholar
Wernicke, SebastianRasche, Florian. 2006. ‘FANMOD: A Tool for Fast Network Notif Detection’. Bioinformatics 22(9):1152–1153.CrossRefGoogle Scholar