City-County Consolidation

Suzanne M. Leland is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Although a frequently discussed reform, campaigns to merge a major municipality and county to form a unified government fail to win voter approval eighty per cent of the time. One cause for the low success rate may be that little systematic analysis of consolidated governments has been done.

Preface 1. A Research Design for Evaluating Consolidation Performance Suzanne M. Leland and Kurt Thurmaier 2. An Assessment of the City-County Consolidation of Nashville and Davidson County, Tennessee Anthony J. Nownes, David J. Houston, and Marc Schwerdt 3. Does Consolidation Make A Difference? A Comparative Analysis of Richmond and Virginia Beach, Virginia Nicholas J. Swartz 4. What Difference Does City-County Consolidation Make? A Historical Analysis of Jacksonville and Tampa, Florida Milan J. Dluhy 5. City-County Consolidation: A Case Study of Carson City, Nevada Anna Lukemeyer 6. "The Urge to Merge": The Consolidation of Lexington and Fayette County, Kentucky Shawn Gillen 7. From Company Town to Consolidated Government: The Western-Style Consolidation of Butte and Silver Bow County, Montana Susan Keim and Justin Marlowe 8. The Case of Lynchburg and Moore County, Tennessee, Consolidation Deborah A. Carroll, Kristin A. Wagers, and Mary Ellen Wiggins 9. Unification Promises and Outcomes: The Case of Athens and Clarke County, Georgia Dan Durning and Paula Sanford 10. Improving the Efficiency and Effectiveness of Service Delivery in Local Government: The Case of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas Suzanne M. Leland and Curtis Wood 11. Promises Made, Promises Kept Kurt Thurmaier and Suzanne M. Leland Contributors Index