The Effects of Local Government Consolidation on Turnout: Evidence from a Quasi‐Experiment in Switzerland

Abstract

In the last decades, municipal mergers have been one major element of local government reforms in Switzerland and beyond. In this article, we describe and analyze the political effects of this development. We use a quasi‐experimental setting to test the impact of municipal mergers on electoral participation. We find that in merged municipalities, the decrease in turnout is significantly stronger than in non‐merged municipalities. Further, the effect is more pronounced in relatively small localities. There is a temporal dimension to this effect—that is, turnout drops mainly in the first election after the first merger, but not so much after the second or third merger. Hence, the study provides a skeptical yet differentiated perspective on the democratic consequences of municipal mergers and points to further research avenues to develop a more comprehensive understanding of local government consolidation.

Merging County Administrations – Cross-National Evidence of Fiscal and Political Effects

“…Table 5 shows for the case of Saxony-Anhalt that voter turnout in county council election decrease by 4.3 percentage points in merged counties compared to unmerged counties. This is fully in line with findings by Fritz and Feld (2015), Koch and Rochat (2017), and Lapointe et al 2018 for municipal mergers in Germany, Switzerland, and Finland respectively. Vote shares for right-wing populists, by contrast, increase by around 1.8 percentage points, which is substantial given the mean right-wing populist vote share of 2.0 percent.…”

“…Therefore, even against the background that most mergers in Saxony-Anhalt were somewhat voluntary and accepted by local councils, voters seem to protest against larger jurisdictions. Koch and Rochat (2017) report similar effects on voter turnout for Swiss municipalities where also local referenda on municipal mergers were held. Lapointe et al 2018 elaborate on the Finish case.…”

Why voluntary municipal merger projects fail: evidence from popular votes in Switzerland

“…A prominent argument against large polities is that citizens' opportunities to make their voices heard are smaller (Dahl and Tufte 1974, 13-15). Indeed, recent empirical studies report consistently negative effects of municipal mergers on citizens' feeling of internal political efficacy (Lassen and Serritzlew 2011), their trust in local government (Hansen 2013) and their participation in local elections (Koch and Rochat 2017). Municipal mergers thus seem to profoundly shake up existing local communities.…”

Effects of municipal mergers on voter turnout

“…Fourth, there are various ways that mergers may affect the expressive components of the model. For example, it may be easier to develop a sense of community in small municipalities, which encourages political participation due to expressive motives such as duty (Koch and Rochat 2017). As municipal size increases these motives may become weaker.…”

“…Saarimaa and Tukiainen (2016), using the same Finnish mergers as the current study, find that mergers had large effects on candidate selection and that voters care for local (pre-merger municipality level) political representation and pool votes to local candidates in order to guarantee representation in the post-merger council in the first post-merger elections. 1 To our knowledge, the only paper that looks at turnout effects of municipal mergers is Koch and Rochat (2017), who find that mergers have a detrimental effect on turnout in Switzerland, especially in the relatively smaller merger partners. Roesel (2017) analyses the turnout effects due to mergers of large county-level governments (districts) in Germany and finds that they also decrease turnout.…”