Explaining Party Positions on Decentralization
نویسندگان
چکیده
Debates about decentralization raise cultural questions of identity and economic questions of redistribution and efficiency. Therefore the preferences of statewide parties regarding decentralization are related to their positions on the economic and cultural ideological dimensions. A statistical analysis using data from thirty-one countries confirms this: parties on the economic right are more supportive of decentralization than parties on the economic left, while culturally liberal parties favour decentralization more than culturally conservative parties. However, country context - specifically the degree of regional self-rule, the extent of regional economic disparity and the ideology of regionalist parties - determines whether and how decentralization is linked to the two dimensions. These findings have implications for our understanding of the politics of decentralization by showing how ideology, rooted in a specific country context, shapes the 'mindset' of agents responsible for determining the territorial distribution of power.
منابع مشابه
Leviathan and Legislative Monopoly Power: Empirical Evidence from OECD Countries
In this paper we test the Leviathan hypothesis, focusing on the joint impact of fiscal decentralization and legislative monopoly power in the growth of the public sector. Two proxies of legislative monopoly power are considered: the control of all relevant houses by the executive party and the margin of majority. Using a dynamic panel-based error correction model on OECD member countries, we fi...
متن کاملThe Role of Political Parties in Empowering Women’s Positions in the UK Parliament
Women’s political representation has been for decades ahead of women’s rights movement. However, women presence in politics is not only limited to women political participation but their position in party politics as well. This paper aims to analyze the role of parties in empowering women at the UK parliament and tries to contribute towards the existing literature through presenting an interdis...
متن کاملPro - poor targeting and electoral rewards in decentralizing to communities the provision of local public goods in rural Zambia
Even though several studies have assessed the degree of progressivity in targeting communities under the participatory Social Investment Fund (SIF) approach to the provision of local public goods, there is yet little evidence on how increasing decentralization affects the quality of this targeting. We identify the impact of increasing decentralization on community targeting using the unique sit...
متن کاملCleavages, Party Strategy and Party System Change in Europe, East and West
This article analyses the development of competitive party politics in post-communist East Central Europe from a comparative perspective. The central concerns are party system stabilisation and change in Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and implications for comparative theory. Starting from Lipset and Rokkan’s ‘cleavage model’, the article assesses the relevance of their key va...
متن کاملExplaining Voter Moderation In Post-Communist Ethnic Party Systems: A Cross-National Investigation in the Balkans
In this paper, I explore conditions that contribute to a rare outcome in ethnic party systems: the election of parties with moderate positions on interethnic relations. More specifically, I investigate why voters of the small, impoverished, and ethnically fragmented states of Bosnia and Macedonia, which share the same electoral system, chose parties with divergent positions on interethnic relat...
متن کامل