8. Conclusion

This last chapter provides a synthesis of the book, highlights its major contributions and projects future research on the causes and consequences of municipal amalgamations. The chapter begins with a summary of the main findings and a discussion of how they fit the overall landscape of research on the topic. The first section underscores how the combination of time and space elements in the analysis contributes to advance our knowledge of the critical junctures present at the birth of local government systems in European countries, how they help to explain the evolution of these systems and, ultimately, why some systems were more subjected to amalgamation reforms than others. The last section of this conclusion reflects on how future research on the topic might be able to move time and space to the forefront of the study of territorial reforms. First, it reflects on the implications of this study for reform theory as a causal explanation of amalgamation reforms and, more generally, how this book might stimulate the development of alternative and/or complementary accounts of these reforms. Next, it suggests that the combination of time and space is also important for the study of the effects of amalgamation reforms and it provides additional hints on how future studies might take advantage of these themes.