We use Finnish local election voting data to analyze whether voters value local representation and act strategically to guarantee it. To identify such preferences and behavior, we exploit municipal mergers as natural experiments, which increase the number of candidates and parties available to...

The empirical literature investigating the role of key features of local governments regarding decisions on consolidation tends to use a dummy that takes 1 if adjacent local governments decide to merge. Under the estimation method, it is difficult to identify which governments have no incentive...

The empirical literature investigating the role of key features of local governments regarding decisions on consolidation tends to use a dummy dependent variable that takes 1 if both adjacent local governments decide to merge and 0 if one of them does not approve consolidation. Under this...