Electoral turnout in amalgamated municipalities: role of characteristics of sub-municipal units

The question how municipal amalgamations influence voter turnout is for long time present in studies of local politics. There have already been several studies attempting to answer the question by various means – mostly by comparing non-amalgamated and amalgamated municipalities in the same time, or the same units before and after amalgamation. These studies clearly show that amalgamation causes decrease in electoral turnout. However, factors moderated the effect remains largely neglect. In this paper, centre-periphery relations are included as such factor. The basic hypothesis suggests that turnout should decrease especially in peripheral units. Periphery is measured by 3 ways – whether a unit host municipal office or not, what services are provided by municipality in the unit, and by size of the unit. In this paper we analyze data from the sub-municipal level of amalgamated municipalities in the 2010–2018 Czech local elections. The Czech Republic is a good case because it allows studying the effect of centre-periphery relations on electoral turnout in the setting of very heterogenous landscape of composition of communities into municipalities.