The Impact of Municipality Mergers on Political Participation |
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Authors: | Bruno S Frey Andre Briviba Anthony Gullo |
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Institution: | 1. University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland;2. CREMA, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts, Zurich, Switzerland |
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Abstract: | The citizen assembly of the Swiss canton Glarus in 2006 decided to radically reduce the historical number of communes from 25 to three. Studies show that the financial and economic consequences are surprisingly small. This paper analyzes the effects on citizens' vote participation as an indicator of their political involvement. Using the difference-in-difference and the synthetic control methods, we empirically show that vote participation dropped significantly, also compared to neighboring cantons and the rest of Switzerland. |
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Keywords: | communes Constitution federal structure Switzerland vote participation |
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