The Effects of Territorial Reforms on Political Disaffection

Recently, there has been a renewed interest in the effects of (changes in) local context on citizens’ attitudes and behavior among public opinion scholars. A common challenge for such studies is to identify the causal effect of local contextual characteristics on individuals’ perceptions. In this paper, we leverage local boundary reforms to assess how changes in local context affect citizens’ perceptions. We combine data on Swiss municipal mergers with individual-level panel data from the Swiss Household Panel to study how local boundary reforms impact citizens’ interest in politics, feelings of political efficacy, and satisfaction with democracy. This data allows to compare individuals living in merged municipalities with individuals living in non-merged municipalities and to assess the effects of local boundary reforms over a long time-period (1999-2019). We expect that mergers decrease citizens’ interest in politics, feelings of political efficacy, and satisfaction with democracy. The results of this study will have important implications for our understanding of the democratic implications of territorial reforms and contribute to a better understanding of how changes in local context impact citizens’ attitudes and behavior.