PRIVATE INCENTIVES AND ACADEMIC ENTREPRENEURSHIP: THE PROMOTION OF CITY-COUNTY CONSOLIDATION

What accounts for the continuing interest in city-county consolidation? This article examines the role played by public administration faculty in the promotion of city- county consolidation through a framework that identifies "consolidation entrepreneurs." Beginning with Schneider, Teske, and Mintrom's (1995) research on "public entrepreneurs" and Rosenbaum and Kammerer's (1974) work on city-county consolidation, this article presents a framework for examining the actors that put these proposals on local reform agendas and their incentives for doing so. This article presents the results of a preliminary empirical test of the role played by PA faculty in getting consolidation on local agendas. Using logistic regression to analyze the emergence of consolidation referenda in 66 communities in six southeastern states, the authors find modest support for the idea that presence of PA faculty translates into successful policy entrepreneurship. Future research should more directly test for the influence of academic and other entrepreneurs on both the initiation of reform proposals and the success or failure of those proposals. Such an effort would likely necessitate survey-based research methods to identify the entrepreneurial activities of other actors such as business, media, and civic groups in addition to academics.