The 'big-bang politics' and process of council amalgamations : a comparative study of the state in Australia and Austria

Structural reforms as a nationally or regionally initiated political project to promote territorial change can be found worldwide. While council amalgamation is identified as an essential issue of research, there is a shortage of contemporary comparative studies on the politics of massive and instant council amalgamations. Council amalgamation has been the predominant local government reform mechanism in Australia for a long time. Very recently, the Australian federal state of New South Wales (NSW) Government implemented a reform program between 2014 and 2017 to create stronger and bigger councils. Conversely, municipal amalgamations in Austria have been rare, signifying institutional conservatism. However, very recently between 2011 and 2014, a new massive amalgamation episode happened when the Austrian federal state of Styria reduced the number of mainly rural and small municipalities by about half. This study is interested in why NSW and Styria choose the same type of reform in the context of very different local government polities. This chapter investigates these two cases, as earnest representations of the big-bang-type of politics and the process of amalgamation. The chapter is divided into four parts. The initial section briefly provides contextual understanding, theoretical background, methodological concepts and hypotheses; and the second section analyses the institutional context and political process of mergers in NSW and Styria. The third section designates the comparative discussion of amalgamations politics and policy process of NSW and Styria. Finally, the chapter ends with the conclusion.