City–County Consolidation

Scholars interested in contesting claims about the advantages and costs of city-county consolidation will find this book a very useful text. Leland and Thurmaier developed a careful research design and recruited a group of researchers to study each of nine city-county consolidations that occurred in order to test three broad hypotheses about the consequences. They found mixed evidence which is presented very carefully and provides the foundation for considerable future policy and research applications. -- Elinor Ostrom, senior research director, Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis, Indiana University, and founding director, Center for the Study of Institutional Diversity, Arizona State University Never before has a book taken a sample of city-county consolidations, attempted to identify control pairs for comparison, delineated the promises made in the preconsolidation campaigns, and used these promises to study the extent to which those promises were met. This book will be of interest to political scientists, experts in public administration, and students of local government. -- Beth Walter Honadle, professor of political science and affiliated faculty, School of Planning, University of Cincinnati This volume, employing a well designed and executed comparative research design, provides the reader with the effect of city-county consolidation in promoting local governmental efficiency and economic development in nine communities. A much needed volume, it is must reading for all scholars of urban government and politics and is an ideal supplementary text to be utilized in graduate courses focusing on urban affairs. -- Nelson Wikstrom, professor of political science, Virginia Commonwealth University

Compares nine city-county consolidations to similar cities and counties that did not consolidate. This book offers insight into whether consolidation meets those promises made to voters to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of these governments.Although a frequently discussed reform, campaigns to merge a major municipality and county to form a unified government fail to win voter approval eighty per cent of the time. One cause for the low success rate may be that little systematic analysis of consolidated governments has been done. In "City-County Consolidation", Suzanne Leland and Kurt Thurmaier compare nine city-county consolidations - incorporating data from 10 years before and after each consolidation - to similar cities and counties that did not consolidate. Their groundbreaking study offers valuable insight into whether consolidation meets those promises made to voters to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of these governments. The book will appeal to those with an interest in urban affairs, economic development, local government management, general public administration, and scholars of policy, political science, sociology, and geography.