Swiss municipalities that voted on a municipal merger project since the year 2000; source: Strebel, M.A. (2025). “The political economy of territorial integration referendums,” Territory, Politics, Governance 13(3): 344–364.
Under which circumstances do municipalities decide to merge with other municipalities? And what do these territorial reforms deliver? These are the guiding questions of my Ambizione project, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, in which I study the causes and consequences of territorial reforms in Switzerland. Since the new millennium, 25% of all Swiss municipalities have disappeared from the map and more than half of them have voted on a municipal merger project they were involved in. I have built a comprehensive dataset of all these popular votes that have been held in Swiss municipalities since the year 2000 (N > 1,500). In combination with other municipal-level data, this dataset allows to assess which kinds of municipalities are predominantly participating in and implementing municipal mergers. Using staggered difference-in-differences and regression discontinuity designs, the main focus of the project is to study the impact of these institutional reforms on the quality of governance and democracy in the affected territories. A lay summary of the project can be found in the research database of the Swiss National Science Foundation.
Published works:
- “Incented voluntary municipal mergers as a two-stage process: Evidence from the Swiss canton of Fribourg,” Urban Affairs Review
- “Why voluntary municipal merger projects fail: Evidence from popular votes in Switzerland,” Local Government Studies
- “Participatory processes and their outcomes: Comparing assembly and popular vote decisions,” European Political Science Review, with Alice el-Wakil
- “A policy-centred approach to inter-municipal cooperation,” Public Management Review, with Pirmin Bundi
- “The political economy of territorial integration referendums,” Territory, Politics, Governance
- “When do subnational jurisdictional mergers impact voting?” Political Geography, with Arjan H. Schakel
Work in progress:
- “The effects of territorial reforms on political disaffection,” with Sven Hegewald [Presented at the ECPR General Conference 2022, the APSA Annual Meeting 2022, the DPSA Conference 2022, the SVPW Annual Conference 2023, the MPSA Annual Conference 2023, and the EPSA Annual Conference 2023] [.pdf]
- “Latent political engagement: Insights from new measures for local democracy,” WWZ Working Paper No. 2025/03, with Tobias Schib and Alois Stutzer [.pdf]
- “The political consequences of territorial reforms: Voting for populist radical right parties after municipal mergers?” [Presented at the SVPW Annual Conference 2020 and NoPSA Congress 2024] [.pdf]
- “Are municipal mergers an antidote to recruitment problems for local political office? [Presented at the SVPW Annual Conference 2024] [Preprint] [.pdf]
Michael A. Strebel 