Redrawing Local Government Boundaries: An International Study of
Politics, Procedures, and Decisions, John Meligrana, ed., Vancouver:
University of British Columbia Press, 2004, pp. 246.
Canadian readers will appreciate this book because it shows us that we
are not alone. Our perennial obsession with adjusting, sometimes
completely redrawing, local-government boundaries has its counterparts
near and far. There is a trajectory and a pattern: Senior levels of
government generally want to see local governments with larger
territories. However, the decision-making and implementation processes,
and the results of those processes, have scarcely been examined or
compared from an international perspective. Even policy makers often have
been in the dark about others' best (or worst) practices. This book
is therefore very useful.