Redistricting decisions for local government rationalization: Models and applications

In the context of general policies oriented to reform welfare systems in western economies, a recent trend has concerned the rationalization of administrative structures of local authorities, including a reduction in the number of administrative levels and units and the subsequent rearrangement of their boundaries. In Italy, governments focused their attention on proposals oriented to reduce the number of provinces, on the basis of a set of given requirements. In this paper, we present some mathematical models that can be used to analyze and tackle the problem. Such models were tested to perform a reorganization of the provinces for a real Italian case, showing their capability of providing insights and support to stakeholders and policy makers.