When Efficiency Is Unbelievable: Normative Lessons from 30 Years of City–County Consolidations |
| |
| Authors: | Suzanne Leland Kurt Thurmaier |
| |
| Affiliation: | Assistant professor in the Political Science Department at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She teaches administrative behavior, urban politics, state and local politics, intergovernmental relations, and public administration theory. She consulted for the consolidation study commissions in Wyandotte County/Kansas City, Kansas, and Wilmington/New Hanover County, North Carolina. E-mail: .; Professor and director of public policy and administration at Iowa State University. He teaches public budgeting, comparative administration, and quantitative analysis. His research interests include budgetary decision making and local government consolidation. He is the coeditor of Case Studies of City–County Consolidation: Reshaping the Local Government Landscape (M. E. Sharpe, 2004). His publications include Policy and Politics in State Budgeting, with Katherine Willoughby, and articles in Public Administration Review, the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, and other scholarly publications. E-mail: . |
| |
| Abstract: | We use a new model of city-county consolidation to analyze 12 local government consolidation attempts during the last three decades. Using a rigorously designed comparative case study, we identify the critical variables that explain why some consolidations succeed and others fail. Arguments for consolidation typically fail when they focus on the increased equity to be gained from the redistribution of revenues from the suburbs to central cities. Traditional arguments that are based on increased efficiency are also unsuccessful. Instead, the essential element of a successful consolidation is a group of civic elites who define the economic development vision for the community, determine that the existing political structure is incapable of supporting and implementing that vision, and convince the voters that city–county consolidation is the key to economic development that will benefit the whole community, not just the elites. |
| |
| Keywords: | |
|
|
