Same Governance,Different Day: Does Metropolitan Reorganization Make a Difference?

This commentary focuses on three points related to the debate about urban governmental restructuring: existing conflicts in the literature regarding the outcomes of local government consolidation; insights about consolidation based on an assessment of the amalgamation of twelve municipal units creating the new city of Ottawa; and, a discussion of a variety of methodological and political factors that may well account for the continuing inconsistency in academic assessments of structural change in local government. One possible explanation for the latter conflict is that governmental reorganization does not really make things substantially different in terms of taxes and services, that is, those outcomes most directly experienced by the average citizen. Over the long term other forces, such as intergovernmental relations and the economy, will tend to negate most of the initial effects of change. While there are likely to be winners and losers related to power in government or regime, it will be argued that in large part, for most citizens, governmental reorganization produces the same governance on a different day.