Amalgamation reforms in Iceland : How strategies have shaped conflicts and outcomes

Abstract

Municipal amalgamation reforms tend to meet resistance and opposition from the municipalities involved. Such territorial reforms can lead to great changes for the municipalities, as well as their inhabitants, since some may have had their jurisdictional boundaries for a long time. Therefore, it is no wonder that conflicts can occur in connection with such reforms (Baldersheim & Rose, 2010). Such shuffling involving not merely municipal boundaries, but also the political landscape, the structure of municipal administration and service delivery, can lead to comprehensive changes for everyone involved. The Norwegian political scientists Baldersheim and Rose (2010) argue that whether such or suggested changes will lead to conflicts can depend on the strategies used during implementation. They also connect this with the institutional context – national and local – and presented an analytical framework in which institutional context determines both the choice of reform strategy and the pattern of conflicts arising from the reform. All this then determines the outcome. Steiner et al. (2016) examined patterns of conflict related to territorial reforms in European countries using this framework. They based their investigation on surveys among experts in 11 European countries. Their main findings were that top-down initiatives and comprehensive reforms were more likely to trigger conflicts and resistance, while more incremental and bottom-up-oriented approaches would probably engender less struggle and defiance, if any. In this article, I take a closer look at Iceland, one of the eleven countries from the Steiner (et al. 2016) study, and use Baldersheim and Rose’s (2010) framework to analyze two cases of municipal structure reforms. Specifically, the Icelandic national authorities have twice tried to implement a comprehensive territorial reform at the local level. This has been done by setting up referendums in majority of the municipalities, first in 1993 and later in 2005. Neither of these reforms (or reform attempts) ended up being successful. To better explain what brought about these outcomes I address the following research questions: What reform strategies were used in the municipal structural reforms in Iceland 1993 and 2005? Were there any conflicts connected to them and if so, what kind of conflicts? Which were the outcomes of these reforms and can they be seen as consequences of the strategies that were used and the conflicts that came up?