Although a frequently discussed reform, campaigns to merge a major municipality and county to form a unified government fail to win voter approval eighty per cent of the time. One cause for the low success rate may be that little systematic analysis of consolidated governments has been done.

In City–County Consolidation, Suzanne Leland and Kurt Thurmaier compare nine city–county consolidations—incorporating data from 10 years before and after each consolidation—to similar cities and counties that did not consolidate. Their groundbreaking study offers valuable insight into whether consolidation meets those promises made to voters to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of these governments.

The book will appeal to those with an interest in urban affairs, economic development, local government management, general public administration, and scholars of policy, political science, sociology, and geography.

As Nashville's governance is under increasing scrutiny by the Tennessee General Assembly, many Nashvillians are struggling to understand what our metropolitan form of government is and why we chose to reorganize our city this way in 1963. Nashville Metro was first published in the aftermath of that decision, and it provides a comprehensive record of what the city understood itself to be doing at the time. How did it happen? When so many less thoroughgoing reforms had failed elsewhere, how could Nashville accomplish a complete city‑county consolidation? Why in Nashville did the voters outside the central city support consolidation, when in area after area it is typically these voters who defeat reform proposals? Why did the consolidation fail in 1958 and succeed in 1962? Nashville Metro was written to answer such questions. One great benefit to Brett W. Hawkins' approach is how he lays out what was conventional wisdom at the time and what was reported in the local papers and balances it against what participants told him directly.
 
This is a valuable artifact in itself, but the new foreword by Judge David Briley—former Nashville mayor and grandson of the first metro Nashville mayor, Beverly Briley—offers a firsthand account of the realities of metropolitan government sixty years on.