Theories of change in evaluation of local government reforms

Based on a review of a number of evaluations and research studies, this essay discusses the challenges involved in evaluating a structural reform amalgamating municipalities to larger units. The actual case is the Danish local government reform of 2007. The main challenges facing the evaluators were the political nature of the reform (difficult to roll back), its complexity (a municipality is a complex organization with a multitude of different services and tasks), and its long-term perspective (the implementation of the reform might take decades and interfere with other interventions). The evaluators have tackled the challenges by using macro data among other methods based on underlying theories on the effects of municipal size. Traces of theories of change in evaluations of the reform are hard to find.