Of the 90,000 “governmental units” counted in the most recent United States Census of Governments, only about 40,000 are “general-purpose” governments such as municipalities and counties. The other 50,000 are “special-purpose” governments that typically undertake only a single activity, such as water supply or fire protection. With the exception of school districts – which constitute only 12,000 of the 50,000 – special-purpose governments have been largely ignored by the academic literature in law and the social sciences. Yet these overlooked entities have been expanding far more rapidly than any other form of government at the federal, state, or local level.The nation’s increasing reliance on special-purpose governments raises two conspicuous issues regarding the boundaries between organizational types. The first issue is the stark gap between special-purpose governments and general-purpose governments. While there are tens of thousands of each type, there is virtually nothing between them – that is, there are almost no governments that provide, say, two or three distinct services. The second boundary issue is the contrasting absence of any clear line, in terms of either services or structure, between special-purpose governments and private-law organizations such as cooperatives and condominiums.This peculiar pattern of boundaries between organizational forms raises, in turn, further basic questions. What, for example, does it mean for an organization to be a “government”? And should the law of special-purpose governments be revised to resemble more closely that which governs private-sector entities by, for instance, adopting uniform enabling statutes that remove limits on permissible purposes or allow formation as of right? Or should the law of special-purpose governments be revised to resemble more closely that applied to general-purpose governments by, for example, extending to them the doctrine of one-person-one-vote? This article addresses these issues, and a variety of others, in an analytic framework that draws on public choice theory and organizational economics. The article concludes by outlining a unified general enabling act for special-purpose governments
