Citizens’ support for inter-municipal cooperation: evidence from a survey in the German state of Hesse

Christian Bergholz and Ivo Bischoff ()

Applied Economics, 2019, vol. 51, issue 12, 1268-1283

Abstract: Inter-municipal cooperation (IMC) is often proposed as a politically feasible way by which rural municipalities can cope with intensified interregional competition and demographic change. We provide first evidence on citizens’ support for IMC using survey data from rural Germany. We find little evidence that citizens are more willing to support IMC in munici-palities that can – by the logic of economic theory – expect higher net benefits from IMC. Citizens’ support for IMC is primarily shaped by individual-level factors like the level of education, trust in local politicians and the degree of emotional attachment to the home mu-nicipality. Citizens’ beliefs regarding the economic and political consequences of IMC are found to have the largest marginal effect by far. Regressions predicting interpersonal differ-ences in these beliefs show that these beliefs have to be considered independent drivers of policy preferences. This result suggests that more research is needed to better understand the factors shaping citizens’ understanding of how economic policy works. This lack of under-standing applies to virtually all fields of economic policy.

Date: 2019
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Working Paper: Citizens‘ support for inter-municipal cooperation: evidence from a survey in the German state of Hesse (2016)
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DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2018.1527444

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