Methodological Approaches to the Study of Amalgamations

This chapter of the book is dedicated to the methodological choices made in the study of municipal amalgamations. Supporting the idea that there are different styles of research, but one single logic of inference (King et al., 1994), I approach the chapter avoiding the classic dichotomy between quantitative and qualitative analysis. Instead, the first section of the chapter describes four types of research designs: case studies, cross-sectional comparative analyses, developmental trends and developmental comparisons. The first section presents the state of the field, describing research designs, data and methods typically employed in empirical studies of amalgamation reforms. By failing to take advantage of developmental comparative designs to account for both time and space elements, scholars have missed the opportunity to develop more robust theoretical explanations for the causes of amalgamation reforms. The second section of the chapter discusses how comparative historical analysis (CHA) can improve research on the topic, allowing scholars to overcome the current challenges to descriptive and causal inferences. The section distinguishes between broad exploratory strategies and causal inference strategies as two different approaches to develop and test explanations for the presence or absence of amalgamation reforms, respectively.