Municipal Disincorporation and the Voluntary Termination of Local Government

When do citizens decide they no longer want local government? The United States phenomenon of municipal disincorporation, wherein citizens voluntarily vote their local governments out of existence, offers a unique chance to think about what citizens expect from their governments and what happens when expectations are not met. Using an original, comprehensive dataset of disincorporation activity in the United States, I show that smaller, economically-worse-off places are significantly more likely to initiate a disincorporation vote, and that population density informs outcomes more than population outright. Furthermore, my findings suggest that policy environments where voters have lower costs and greater access to information greatly inform these outcomes. These results are meaningful because they evaluate political behavior concerning local government in extreme circumstances, rather than merely political attitudes.

Download the paper here