PPA 122 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Public Choice

• School: Ryerson University
• Department: Politics and Public Administration
• Course: PPA 122
• Professor: Duncan Mac Lellan

Document Summary

Municipal consolidation one level of government that covers a metropolitan area. Large municipalities create efficiencies of scale (garbage collection: overcome problems of institutional fragmentation, equity-people in same region should have access to same services, global competition-can attract talent and investment. Investors not influenced by appeals by large govements. Citizens and business will choose municipalities that have the best services and taxes for them. Municipalities with the best services attract people and investors. Public choice theory of government suggesting the best path to efficiency is competition between local governments for citizens and investment. Therefore, more smaller municipalities better than few large ones. Public choice, critical of assumptions of those advocating consolidation. Two tier municipalities - authority divided between upper (county or region) and lower (cities or town) Advantages of both large single tier municipalities while maintaining diversity of lower tier municipalities. Upper tiers generally assigned region wide responsibility such as region wide responsibility, such as regional roads and waste disposal.