TY - JOUR
T1 - The Australian experience of municipal amalgamation
T2 - asking the citizenry and exploring the implications
AU - Ryan, Roberta
AU - Hastings, Catherine
AU - Grant, Bligh
AU - Lawrie, Alex
AU - Ní Shé, Éidín
AU - Wortley, Liana
PY - 2016/9/1
Y1 - 2016/9/1
N2 - Debate over municipal amalgamations in Australian continues to dominate local government reform agendas, with the putative need to achieve economies of scale and scope consistently set against anti-amalgamation arguments designed to preserve extant communities. Following from an examination of recent episodes of consolidation in Australia, this paper reports on citizens' attitudes to amalgamation garnered from a national survey of 2,006 individuals. We found that generally, citizens are ambivalent toward amalgamation, although attitudes were influenced by particular demographic characteristics and attitudes to representation, belonging, service delivery requirements and the costs thereof. The results suggest that, away from the local government sector itself, structural reform may not be the vexatious issue it is often portrayed as. The implications of this are explored here.
AB - Debate over municipal amalgamations in Australian continues to dominate local government reform agendas, with the putative need to achieve economies of scale and scope consistently set against anti-amalgamation arguments designed to preserve extant communities. Following from an examination of recent episodes of consolidation in Australia, this paper reports on citizens' attitudes to amalgamation garnered from a national survey of 2,006 individuals. We found that generally, citizens are ambivalent toward amalgamation, although attitudes were influenced by particular demographic characteristics and attitudes to representation, belonging, service delivery requirements and the costs thereof. The results suggest that, away from the local government sector itself, structural reform may not be the vexatious issue it is often portrayed as. The implications of this are explored here.
KW - amalgamation
KW - local democracy
KW - localism
KW - representation
KW - service delivery
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84952684893&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/1467-8500.12182
DO - 10.1111/1467-8500.12182
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84952684893
SN - 0313-6647
VL - 75
SP - 373
EP - 390
JO - Australian Journal of Public Administration
JF - Australian Journal of Public Administration
IS - 3
ER -