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Silvia Bolgherini and Aldo Paparo proposes a unified framework to investigate the amalgamation/turnout relation in comparative perspective.

Image courtesy of interviewee. January 31, 2024

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This video video discusses a study on municipal amalgamation—merger of two or more municipalities—highlighting its effects on electoral turnout. The study began amid a wave of municipal mergers in Europe aimed at cost savings and rationalization during economic recession. It aimed to analyze how these amalgamations impact voter participation in elections at the local level.

Key findings include:

1. **Decrease in Turnout**: Overall, the study found a decrease in municipal voter turnout by approximately three percentage points post-amalgamation across ten countries and over a thousand municipal units.

2. **Factors Affecting Turnout**:
- **Process of Amalgamation**: Whether the amalgamation was voluntary or imposed by the national government significantly influenced turnout. Imposed amalgamations led to greater declines in participation.
- **Size of Amalgamated Units**: While larger municipalities were expected to see lower turnout, the research revealed that the increase in size itself is not the sole cause of reduced participation; rather, it is the amalgamation process that predominantly matters.
- **Community Dynamics**: The nature of the municipalities merged also played a role. Merging similar-sized municipalities created political conflicts that could diminish turnout.

3. **Inclusion and Balance as Policy Implications**:
- Including citizens in the amalgamation decision-making process and ensuring balance among merging municipal units are recommended strategies to mitigate negative effects on voter turnout.

4. **Complexity of Voter Behavior**: The study suggests that while amalgamation increases the size of municipalities, the two phenomena—size and amalgamation—should be viewed differently in terms of their impacts on electoral behavior.

The research contributes to understanding municipal reforms and emphasizes that policymakers should pursue inclusive and balanced approaches to mitigate the adverse effects on local electoral participation.

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Here are some similar articles discussing topics related to municipal amalgamation and its effects on electoral turnout, voter participation, and local governance:

1. **"The Impact of Municipal Mergers on Voting Behavior: Evidence from Canada"**
This article explores how municipal amalgamations in various Canadian provinces have affected electoral turnout and local political engagement, highlighting similarities in trends across different regions.

2. **"Amalgamation and Voter Turnout: A Longitudinal Study"**
This study examines the long-term effects of municipal mergers in a specific country over several election cycles, providing insights into the patterns of voter participation before and after amalgamation.

3. **"Effects of Local Government Restructuring on Citizen Engagement"**
This article discusses the broader implications of local government restructuring, including municipal amalgamation, on citizen engagement and political participation across various European countries.

4. **"Voter Turnout and Local Government Size: Analyzing the Relationship"**
This research analyzes the relationship between the size of local government units and voter turnout, comparing findings from jurisdictions with and without recent municipal mergers.

5. **"The Politics of Amalgamation: Understanding the Dynamics of Local Governance Reform"**
This paper examines the political convideo of municipal amalgamations, including the motivations behind these reforms and their impact on electoral behavior and community identity.

6. **"Community Identity and Electoral Participation in Amalgamated Municipalities"**
This article investigates how community identity affects electoral participation in regions that have undergone municipal amalgamation, focusing on social cohesion and sense of belonging.

7. **"Participatory Governance in Local Mergers: Lessons from Recent Reforms"**
This study discusses the importance of citizen participation in the decision-making process regarding municipal mergers and how it can influence the outcomes related to voter turnout and community satisfaction.

These articles can provide additional perspectives and empirical data related to the implications of municipal amalgamation on electoral turnout and citizen engagement in local politics.

X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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We started, municipal amalgamation, which is the,

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unification of one or, or two

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or more municipalities together.

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It's always, called also, municipal merger

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or amalgamation is quite the same thing.

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Mean, namely that,

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several municipalities become one.

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And that's the object of our, of our analysis.

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And this is a phenomenon that Europe is and all,

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and also beyond Europe is, is quite interesting.

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And it goes in ways actually.

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There are some periods where a lot of amalgamation happens,

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and then there are silence for a while.

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And then other ki another way of reform.

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So we were interested also in this,

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in this different, different wave.

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And the most recent one, had happened in the,

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during the wave resection time, in Europe.

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There was another boost for, for the sake of rational

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rationalization and, save costs and cut expenses.

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Uh, and that interested us

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because it was another wave of, without arguments

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to merge, unified municipalities.

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And we also wanted to explore how this phenomenon,

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these territorial reforms had an impact on elector turnout.

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So political participation,

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elector participation at the local level, the bigger units,

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could have different, impact on,

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electoral behavior.

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And then here we developed and,

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and disentangle several issues

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that were not so clear before.

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Um, our study list, we, we seem

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to have given a contribution in this respect.

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For instance, we think that the, the size

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and the amalgamation effect to see,

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have been always considered, overlapped the same.

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The, it was not, sufficiently clear

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that the two things size

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and amalgamation are not, the same thing here.

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It, there are two different, phenomenon.

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They have two different effects.

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True amalgamations implies a bigger size.

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So,

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but the process of amalgamation per see the process

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as also other, consequences.

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It implies political dynamics that could,

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which could be different.

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It could have more, short-term impacts

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than size alone.

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Size impacts a lot of course, municipal turnout,

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but more in the sense of public policies, long-term,

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elements.

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So the two things were has been always coupled

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and, you measure,

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other studies have always measured size

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as a proxy for amalgamation.

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All those contributions that rely on the, so-called Size

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and the democracy dilemma,

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or, it goes back, it can be traced back, of course,

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with the classical studies even in ancient history,

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and ancient Greek with the size of the poly optimal size

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of a policy, in terms of well functioning, in terms

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of the court of its democracy.

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Uh, but in more recent, period, of course, the,

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the funding studies can be considered,

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in the c in the seventies, that of, rotten Dah

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and in 73.

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Um, and they, retook exactly this point.

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And their, their argument was that the,

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the smaller the size, the higher,

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the sense of participation, the sense of community,

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the social bounds, the sort of control, also the direct,

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connections with the representative.

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All these, elements typical of a smaller unit,

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a smaller community would improve political engagement,

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political participation,

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because also of the, political sense

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of political efficacy the other way around for larger units

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where of course, other, elements such

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as the capacity of,

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of these larger units come into, in, in place.

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So, their capability of, dealing

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with larger public policies more important in terms of

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magnitude public policies.

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But there, this also implies,

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larger distance, a greater distance to, between citizens

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and administrators, and so on.

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And so, loser social bounds

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and ties and so on and so forth.

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All this should bring to a loser participation

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and a loser also sense of political efficacy.

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There is a lot of literature on this

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and applied to the amalgamation.

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Uh, this mantra has been always confirmed, namely

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that larger size implies lower turnout also in

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case of amalgamation.

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Um, what drove us,

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however, was the fact that there are a lot of confirmation

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of these, mantras, so say at Agiles,

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but they're mostly single studies, single case studies,

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what it was not present.

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And what we think we contributed to

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is a large scale comparative analysis.

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So, in order to conduct our empirical analysis,

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we have assembled an original data sets, including,

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more than a thousand municipal post amalgamation units.

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Uh, meaning we have focused, we have selected,

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municipalities which suffered, in amalgamation,

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across 10 different, European countries.

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So these 1200 post municipal units

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were created through an amalgamation, which merged

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a certain number of pre amalgamation municipal units.

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Overall, we are talking about roughly,

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4,503 amalgamation municipal units.

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So on average, each of our post amalgamation units,

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is made of roughly 3.5 pre amalgamation municipalities.

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Uh, so this is our dataset in order,

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these are our observation, order

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to conduct our empirical analysis.

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We need to record to compute,

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turn out the municipal election before and

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after the amalgamation, of course, in order to see

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what was the effect of the treatment,

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and also in particular, if,

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and we will see how we are able

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to disentangle differentiated effect of this treatment,

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suffering the amalgamation according to

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how your particular amalgamation was made.

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So, for the post amalgamation municipal units,

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that is pretty straightforward.

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We have the municipal election of the post A,

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the first municipal election,

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the post amalgamation unit held after the amalgamation.

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It's our post-treatment observation.

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In order to observe the pre amalgamation, pre-treatment,

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municipal turnout, we needed to reconstruct it

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because of course, we do not have in the official data the

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numbers, concerning the post amalgamation unit,

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which wasn't created at the moment.

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So we take the information for the pre amalgamation units,

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which we know will be merged in order

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to form the final unit post amalgamation,

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and we reconstruct recompute the turnout

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that, we can come up with

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for the post amalgamation unit by summing

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the actual turnouts observed in the different

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pre amalgamation units.

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The variation between pre

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and post amalgamation municipal turnout is

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our dependent variable.

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The phenomenon we are trying to explain account for.

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Now, the first descriptive element that we have is

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that overall across 10 countries, across over a thousand

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amalgamated units, we find that in fact,

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we do have a decrease of municipal turnout

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of roughly three percentage points as opposed

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to the final pre amalgam municipal election.

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In the first post amalgamation municipal election,

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we have lower turnout or roughly three points.

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However, this is just an initial piece of evidence

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because we go beyond this and we try to disentangle,

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because this three percentage points in decline is not

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absolutely constant across our thousand observation,

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there is a lot of variance.

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So our real research question is how can we account

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for the variance in the decline

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or in the variation of the municipal turnout that we observe

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after the amalgamation?

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So in order to,

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to empirically assess the predictive power over our

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phenomenon of interest, variation in municipal to not

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after the amalgamation process, we have,

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performed a series of multi-level,

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where the two levels are municipalities, the lower level

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and countries, the higher level, mixed effect,

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regression analysis.

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Uh, this is adequate to com to cope to deal

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with the particular structure of our data,

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while allowing us to detect the meaningful effect

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of the variable.

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We have an interest in the predictors,

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the independent variables,

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whose predictive power we assess

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and we have a scientific interest in

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are in particular related to the nature

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of the amalgamation as a policy process.

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So amalgamation can be made

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by putting together two municipalities

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or five municipalities.

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It can be made nationwide

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or just involve one specific

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post amalgamation unit.

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Uh, it can be made by including voters

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and citizens in the decision making process about the

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amalgamation itself, or it can be forced imposed

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by the national government.

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So all these aspects we expect have an influence

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on the particular variation in the municipal turnout.

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We observe in the different municipalities.

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Our finding reveal that there is a huge effect of

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how the amalgamation happened as a policy process,

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both the characteristics at the municipal level,

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and I will mention them in a while.

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And at the national level matter, the ones

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that have the largest predictive power,

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are those pertaining the national level

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of the policy process of municipal amalgamation.

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And two in particular stand out.

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One is whether the process was carried out, forcing it

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by the national government versus a voluntary process

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including the citizens.

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If the process is imposed by the national government,

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we find a much larger detrimental effect over voter turnout.

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Okay. On the other end,

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if citizens were involved in the decision making process,

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this, reduces drastically the, the turnout decline

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after the amalgamation process.

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This is the first point. Then we also find

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that another thing is the scope overall

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of the am amalgamation wave.

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Basically, how many municipalities were merged

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in a given country at a given moment, just one.

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This is particularly detrimental for water turnout.

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If all of the municipalities

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of the country were involved in national wide scale reform,

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this reduces the reducing power of the amalgamation process

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of a voted or not.

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Then we also have significant findings

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for the municipal level characteristics.

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Basically how many units were merged in

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that particular amalgamation.

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A post amalgamation unit can be made up of two

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pre amalgam municipalities or five, even 10.

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In some cases. These matters,

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the more municipalities are merged, the more

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municipal turnout is not reduced.

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If only two municipalities are merged,

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this is the one case in which municipal turnout

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is reduced the most.

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The other element that we find having a significant effect

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is what we call cross unit population polarization.

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Basically to explain these in simple terms, let's say

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that two municipalities are merged.

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These two municipalities could,

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before the amalgamation have the same population,

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or we could be dealing with a capital city

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and a small, inner circle, municipality

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that get gets merged into the capital of the county.

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Our expectation is that, these matters,

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and in particular we expect for theoretical reason,

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the detrimental effect of the amalgamation process

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to be particularly felt in the small municipality.

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But if the small municipalities merged into a two large

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municipality in the post amalgamation unit,

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the overall effect will be washed away.

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On the other hand, we expect

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that when two similar municipalities are merged in terms

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of pre amalgamation size, this will will create,

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a political conflict to control the new municipalities

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among citizens of the two

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similar in size municipalities.

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And this as a diminishes the, the, the reductive effect

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that amalgamation brings on turnout, basically.

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So, and this is also confirmed, the final piece of evidence,

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which despite being a new finding,

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a non-significant finding, we demand a relevant piece

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of evidence pertains to size,

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because as Sylvia pointed out, there is a large strand

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of literature that, equates size

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and turnout.

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Let's say we do not find any significant effect.

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So amalgamation implies an increase in size

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compared to the pre amalgamation situation.

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We do find that generally speaking,

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there is a detrimental effect

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of the amalgamation three percentage point,

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but this is not due to size, per se.

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This is due as we can show to the particular configuration

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of the policy process put forward in

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that particular municipality.

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We think that, along with these findings,

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we can draw also some policy implication,

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because if it's true, that size does not matter

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so much, but it is the process indeed,

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that matter most.

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When, when it deals with parti, with municipal turnout,

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then we can say that for policymakers at the national,

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but also at the, at the local level, these are elements

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that could be or,

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and should be taken into con, into account,

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into consideration when implementing or when envisaging.

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Uh, a territorial reform, such as those of, of amalgamation

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and two things emerged that lo nationally

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is actually what we could, call inclusion

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matter matters.

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We, although explain how,

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a lot when a larger number of municipalities is involved,

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that so inclusion,

16:43.275 --> 16:46.325
that has a less detrimental effect on,

16:46.425 --> 16:48.085
on turnout, on participation.

16:48.425 --> 16:51.045
The same apply, applies when,

16:51.425 --> 16:54.965
the process is voluntary, is, bottom up.

16:55.345 --> 16:59.765
So inclusion of the citizenship of, of the local communities

17:00.845 --> 17:02.815
that is also,

17:03.855 --> 17:06.095
diminishes the detrimental effect

17:06.095 --> 17:07.655
of amalgamation on turnout.

17:07.795 --> 17:12.135
So at the, at the national level, inclusion is the,

17:12.795 --> 17:15.695
is the policy implication, the policy recommendation

17:15.695 --> 17:19.375
that at the local level instead,

17:19.375 --> 17:22.815
there's another policy implication, which is,

17:23.445 --> 17:27.975
balance, which could be labeled balance,

17:27.975 --> 17:30.935
because Aldo explained how the relations,

17:30.995 --> 17:35.135
the site relationship between the, amalgamating units

17:36.115 --> 17:38.575
can have, detrimental

17:38.795 --> 17:42.015
or favorable effect on, on, on turn now.

17:42.195 --> 17:44.135
So the most, the more the,

17:44.145 --> 17:46.095
these local units are balanced

17:47.285 --> 17:51.555
before amalgamation, the more this,

17:51.955 --> 17:55.155
diminishes the detrimental role, effect of,

17:55.375 --> 17:57.155
of amalgamation on turn now.

17:57.455 --> 18:01.835
So inclusion and balance are the two things we will like

18:01.835 --> 18:05.795
to recommend to policy makers take into consideration when,

18:06.145 --> 18:08.235
when implementer and ING report,

18:08.645 --> 18:09.795
There will be more in the future.

18:10.135 --> 18:14.555
And we have laid out kind of a route in order

18:14.575 --> 18:16.315
to minimize the detrimental effect

18:16.315 --> 18:17.595
of municipal participation.

18:17.735 --> 18:19.715
And that is something worth

18:19.965 --> 18:21.715
mentioning for the general public.

18:21.775 --> 18:23.675
But in terms of scientific literature,

18:23.715 --> 18:25.915
I think we have a number of claims that are

18:26.565 --> 18:28.115
worth briefly mentioning.

18:28.175 --> 18:32.355
So first of all, indeed municipal amalgamation implies an

18:32.555 --> 18:34.475
increase in size that is straightforward.

18:35.135 --> 18:38.435
And we do find that this increase in size brings

18:39.895 --> 18:41.795
on average a declining in participation.

18:42.335 --> 18:43.835
But we have also pointed out

18:43.935 --> 18:48.595
and shown that amalgamation is not a uniform phenomenon.

18:49.095 --> 18:50.875
It is not a unique treatment

18:50.875 --> 18:52.915
that you can expect municipal voters

18:52.935 --> 18:54.155
to react in a given way.

18:55.155 --> 18:57.045
However, this is also something

18:57.045 --> 18:58.765
that is not obscure or random.

18:59.145 --> 19:01.045
It is not a uniform treatment,

19:01.785 --> 19:06.685
but we can predict the patterns of the different treatments

19:06.915 --> 19:08.845
that amalgamation can infect be,

19:09.185 --> 19:10.725
and this is something very important.

19:11.225 --> 19:13.805
So size per se does not matter,

19:14.305 --> 19:17.845
but the composition of size in terms

19:17.845 --> 19:20.045
of the pre amalgamation units that matters.

19:20.395 --> 19:23.565
That is something that is important to, to stress.

19:24.075 --> 19:27.285
Also, our, our findings speak to

19:28.245 --> 19:30.365
a larger literature in terms of public policy.

19:30.505 --> 19:33.365
For instance, there is a classical study by Wilson

19:33.475 --> 19:36.365
that underlines when that when costs

19:36.505 --> 19:39.845
of a policies are concentrated, these increased conflicts.

19:40.385 --> 19:41.925
And this is what we find,

19:42.075 --> 19:43.205
because in fact,

19:43.515 --> 19:47.085
when just a few scattered municipalities suffer the

19:47.085 --> 19:50.125
amalgamation conflict, that is particularly high.

19:50.145 --> 19:52.285
And this translate into dissatisfaction

19:52.545 --> 19:56.125
and lower participation on the other end when this is a

19:56.365 --> 19:57.725
national scale reform.

19:58.745 --> 20:02.285
So costs are more diffused, there is not much conflict,

20:02.285 --> 20:05.685
and voters react very much better in terms

20:05.685 --> 20:07.645
of their post amalgamation participation.

20:08.795 --> 20:10.765
Also, there is another interesting element

20:11.075 --> 20:13.285
that pertains instrumental voting.

20:13.745 --> 20:17.045
So the idea that voters, we look at municipal turnout.

20:17.105 --> 20:18.965
Now, first of all, we have to explain why

20:18.965 --> 20:20.365
voters spend time voting.

20:20.945 --> 20:23.405
Uh, there is a large strand of literature that

20:23.555 --> 20:27.565
that underlines that voters cast their vote hoping

20:27.985 --> 20:29.565
to achieve a certain goal.

20:30.075 --> 20:34.925
Okay? So amalgamation on the one end diminishes the power

20:34.945 --> 20:37.805
of the single voter because increasing population,

20:38.905 --> 20:41.125
the control of the final winner

20:41.185 --> 20:43.365
of the election, gets reduced.

20:43.545 --> 20:47.995
Of course, on the other end, through your vote,

20:48.495 --> 20:51.595
you control a larger scope of policy.

20:51.815 --> 20:52.995
As Sylvia pointed out,

20:53.505 --> 20:56.355
post amalgamation municipalities are larger,

20:56.775 --> 21:00.075
so they have more money, more resources, more spoils.

21:00.655 --> 21:04.035
So tho these two effects,

21:04.985 --> 21:07.995
have expected different direction.

21:08.375 --> 21:11.515
So if the loss of power in controlling the outcome

21:11.515 --> 21:15.395
of the election prevails, voters should turn out less.

21:16.255 --> 21:18.835
If on the other hand, they prefer,

21:18.835 --> 21:23.155
controlling a larger spoil, they should turn out more.

21:23.375 --> 21:28.155
So our finding are in line with this, latter idea,

21:28.695 --> 21:32.715
the, the larger spoils prevail over the loss of power

21:32.895 --> 21:34.075
for the municipal voter.

00:00 - We started, municipal amalgamation, which is the, unification of one or, or two or more municipalities together. It's always, called also, municipal merger or amalgamation is quite the same thing. Mean, namely that,

00:16 - several municipalities become one. And that's the object of our, of our analysis. And this is a phenomenon that Europe is and all, and also beyond Europe is, is quite interesting. And it goes in ways actually. There are some periods where a lot of amalgamation happens, and then there are silence for a while. And then other ki another way of reform. So we were interested also in this, in this different, different wave.

00:44 - And the most recent one, had happened in the, during the wave resection time, in Europe. There was another boost for, for the sake of rational rationalization and, save costs and cut expenses. and that interested us because it was another wave of, without arguments to merge, unified municipalities. And we also wanted to explore how this phenomenon, these territorial reforms had an impact on elector turnout. So political participation,

01:21 - elector participation at the local level, the bigger units, could have different, impact on, electoral behavior. And then here we developed and, and disentangle several issues that were not so clear before. our study list, we, we seem to have given a contribution in this respect. For instance, we think that the, the size and the amalgamation effect to see,

01:53 - have been always considered, overlapped the same. The, it was not, sufficiently clear that the two things size and amalgamation are not, the same thing here. It, there are two different, phenomenon. They have two different effects. True amalgamations implies a bigger size. So, but the process of amalgamation per see the process as also other, consequences.

02:25 - It implies political dynamics that could, which could be different. It could have more, short-term impacts than size alone. Size impacts a lot of course, municipal turnout, but more in the sense of public policies, long-term, elements. So the two things were has been always coupled and, you measure, other studies have always measured size

02:54 - as a proxy for amalgamation. All those contributions that rely on the, so-called Size and the democracy dilemma, or, it goes back, it can be traced back, of course, with the classical studies even in ancient history, and ancient Greek with the size of the poly optimal size of a policy, in terms of well functioning, in terms of the court of its democracy. but in more recent, period, of course, the, the funding studies can be considered,

03:29 - in the c in the seventies, that of, rotten Dah and in 73. and they, retook exactly this point. And their, their argument was that the, the smaller the size, the higher, the sense of participation, the sense of community, the social bounds, the sort of control, also the direct, connections with the representative. All these, elements typical of a smaller unit, a smaller community would improve political engagement,

04:09 - political participation, because also of the, political sense of political efficacy the other way around for larger units where of course, other, elements such as the capacity of, of these larger units come into, in, in place. So, their capability of, dealing with larger public policies more important in terms of magnitude public policies. But there, this also implies,

04:42 - larger distance, a greater distance to, between citizens and administrators, and so on. And so, loser social bounds and ties and so on and so forth. All this should bring to a loser participation and a loser also sense of political efficacy. There is a lot of literature on this and applied to the amalgamation. this mantra has been always confirmed, namely that larger size implies lower turnout also in

05:17 - case of amalgamation. what drove us, however, was the fact that there are a lot of confirmation of these, mantras, so say at Agiles, but they're mostly single studies, single case studies, what it was not present. And what we think we contributed to is a large scale comparative analysis. So, in order to conduct our empirical analysis, we have assembled an original data sets, including,

05:54 - more than a thousand municipal post amalgamation units. meaning we have focused, we have selected, municipalities which suffered, in amalgamation, across 10 different, European countries. So these 1200 post municipal units were created through an amalgamation, which merged a certain number of pre amalgamation municipal units. Overall, we are talking about roughly, 4,503 amalgamation municipal units. So on average, each of our post amalgamation units,

06:37 - is made of roughly 3.5 pre amalgamation municipalities. so this is our dataset in order, these are our observation, order to conduct our empirical analysis. We need to record to compute, turn out the municipal election before and after the amalgamation, of course, in order to see what was the effect of the treatment, and also in particular, if, and we will see how we are able

07:04 - to disentangle differentiated effect of this treatment, suffering the amalgamation according to how your particular amalgamation was made. So, for the post amalgamation municipal units, that is pretty straightforward. We have the municipal election of the post A, the first municipal election, the post amalgamation unit held after the amalgamation. It's our post-treatment observation. In order to observe the pre amalgamation, pre-treatment,

07:38 - municipal turnout, we needed to reconstruct it because of course, we do not have in the official data the numbers, concerning the post amalgamation unit, which wasn't created at the moment. So we take the information for the pre amalgamation units, which we know will be merged in order to form the final unit post amalgamation, and we reconstruct recompute the turnout that, we can come up with for the post amalgamation unit by summing

08:14 - the actual turnouts observed in the different pre amalgamation units. The variation between pre and post amalgamation municipal turnout is our dependent variable. The phenomenon we are trying to explain account for. Now, the first descriptive element that we have is that overall across 10 countries, across over a thousand amalgamated units, we find that in fact, we do have a decrease of municipal turnout

08:47 - of roughly three percentage points as opposed to the final pre amalgam municipal election. In the first post amalgamation municipal election, we have lower turnout or roughly three points. However, this is just an initial piece of evidence because we go beyond this and we try to disentangle, because this three percentage points in decline is not absolutely constant across our thousand observation, there is a lot of variance. So our real research question is how can we account

09:19 - for the variance in the decline or in the variation of the municipal turnout that we observe after the amalgamation? So in order to, to empirically assess the predictive power over our phenomenon of interest, variation in municipal to not after the amalgamation process, we have, performed a series of multi-level, where the two levels are municipalities, the lower level and countries, the higher level, mixed effect,

09:54 - regression analysis. this is adequate to com to cope to deal with the particular structure of our data, while allowing us to detect the meaningful effect of the variable. We have an interest in the predictors, the independent variables, whose predictive power we assess and we have a scientific interest in are in particular related to the nature

10:22 - of the amalgamation as a policy process. So amalgamation can be made by putting together two municipalities or five municipalities. It can be made nationwide or just involve one specific post amalgamation unit. it can be made by including voters and citizens in the decision making process about the amalgamation itself, or it can be forced imposed

10:48 - by the national government. So all these aspects we expect have an influence on the particular variation in the municipal turnout. We observe in the different municipalities. Our finding reveal that there is a huge effect of how the amalgamation happened as a policy process, both the characteristics at the municipal level, and I will mention them in a while. And at the national level matter, the ones that have the largest predictive power,

11:23 - are those pertaining the national level of the policy process of municipal amalgamation. And two in particular stand out. One is whether the process was carried out, forcing it by the national government versus a voluntary process including the citizens. If the process is imposed by the national government, we find a much larger detrimental effect over voter turnout. Okay. On the other end, if citizens were involved in the decision making process,

11:55 - this, reduces drastically the, the turnout decline after the amalgamation process. This is the first point. Then we also find that another thing is the scope overall of the am amalgamation wave. Basically, how many municipalities were merged in a given country at a given moment, just one. This is particularly detrimental for water turnout. If all of the municipalities of the country were involved in national wide scale reform,

12:27 - this reduces the reducing power of the amalgamation process of a voted or not. Then we also have significant findings for the municipal level characteristics. Basically how many units were merged in that particular amalgamation. A post amalgamation unit can be made up of two pre amalgam municipalities or five, even 10. In some cases. These matters, the more municipalities are merged, the more

12:59 - municipal turnout is not reduced. If only two municipalities are merged, this is the one case in which municipal turnout is reduced the most. The other element that we find having a significant effect is what we call cross unit population polarization. Basically to explain these in simple terms, let's say that two municipalities are merged. These two municipalities could, before the amalgamation have the same population,

13:31 - or we could be dealing with a capital city and a small, inner circle, municipality that get gets merged into the capital of the county. Our expectation is that, these matters, and in particular we expect for theoretical reason, the detrimental effect of the amalgamation process to be particularly felt in the small municipality. But if the small municipalities merged into a two large municipality in the post amalgamation unit, the overall effect will be washed away.

14:09 - On the other hand, we expect that when two similar municipalities are merged in terms of pre amalgamation size, this will will create, a political conflict to control the new municipalities among citizens of the two similar in size municipalities. And this as a diminishes the, the, the reductive effect that amalgamation brings on turnout, basically. So, and this is also confirmed, the final piece of evidence, which despite being a new finding,

14:46 - a non-significant finding, we demand a relevant piece of evidence pertains to size, because as Sylvia pointed out, there is a large strand of literature that, equates size and turnout. Let's say we do not find any significant effect. So amalgamation implies an increase in size compared to the pre amalgamation situation. We do find that generally speaking, there is a detrimental effect

15:19 - of the amalgamation three percentage point, but this is not due to size, per se. This is due as we can show to the particular configuration of the policy process put forward in that particular municipality. We think that, along with these findings, we can draw also some policy implication, because if it's true, that size does not matter so much, but it is the process indeed, that matter most.

15:53 - When, when it deals with parti, with municipal turnout, then we can say that for policymakers at the national, but also at the, at the local level, these are elements that could be or, and should be taken into con, into account, into consideration when implementing or when envisaging. a territorial reform, such as those of, of amalgamation and two things emerged that lo nationally is actually what we could, call inclusion matter matters.

16:32 - We, although explain how, a lot when a larger number of municipalities is involved, that so inclusion, that has a less detrimental effect on, on turnout, on participation. The same apply, applies when, the process is voluntary, is, bottom up. So inclusion of the citizenship of, of the local communities that is also, diminishes the detrimental effect

17:06 - of amalgamation on turnout. So at the, at the national level, inclusion is the, is the policy implication, the policy recommendation that at the local level instead, there's another policy implication, which is, balance, which could be labeled balance, because Aldo explained how the relations, the site relationship between the, amalgamating units can have, detrimental or favorable effect on, on, on turn now.

17:42 - So the most, the more the, these local units are balanced before amalgamation, the more this, diminishes the detrimental role, effect of, of amalgamation on turn now. So inclusion and balance are the two things we will like to recommend to policy makers take into consideration when, when implementer and ING report, There will be more in the future. And we have laid out kind of a route in order

18:14 - to minimize the detrimental effect of municipal participation. And that is something worth mentioning for the general public. But in terms of scientific literature, I think we have a number of claims that are worth briefly mentioning. So first of all, indeed municipal amalgamation implies an increase in size that is straightforward. And we do find that this increase in size brings

18:39 - on average a declining in participation. But we have also pointed out and shown that amalgamation is not a uniform phenomenon. It is not a unique treatment that you can expect municipal voters to react in a given way. However, this is also something that is not obscure or random. It is not a uniform treatment, but we can predict the patterns of the different treatments

19:06 - that amalgamation can infect be, and this is something very important. So size per se does not matter, but the composition of size in terms of the pre amalgamation units that matters. That is something that is important to, to stress. Also, our, our findings speak to a larger literature in terms of public policy. For instance, there is a classical study by Wilson that underlines when that when costs

19:36 - of a policies are concentrated, these increased conflicts. And this is what we find, because in fact, when just a few scattered municipalities suffer the amalgamation conflict, that is particularly high. And this translate into dissatisfaction and lower participation on the other end when this is a national scale reform. So costs are more diffused, there is not much conflict, and voters react very much better in terms

20:05 - of their post amalgamation participation. Also, there is another interesting element that pertains instrumental voting. So the idea that voters, we look at municipal turnout. Now, first of all, we have to explain why voters spend time voting. there is a large strand of literature that that underlines that voters cast their vote hoping to achieve a certain goal. Okay? So amalgamation on the one end diminishes the power

20:34 - of the single voter because increasing population, the control of the final winner of the election, gets reduced. Of course, on the other end, through your vote, you control a larger scope of policy. As Sylvia pointed out, post amalgamation municipalities are larger, so they have more money, more resources, more spoils. So tho these two effects, have expected different direction.

21:08 - So if the loss of power in controlling the outcome of the election prevails, voters should turn out less. If on the other hand, they prefer, controlling a larger spoil, they should turn out more. So our finding are in line with this, latter idea, the, the larger spoils prevail over the loss of power for the municipal voter.

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