The Republic of Indonesia is the fourth largest country in the world with a population of over 200 million people. It is an extremely socially and culturally varied nation: there are more than 300 ethnic groups, each with its own language, customs, and form of social organization. Population and attendant social, political, and economic activities are dispersed across a collection of nearly 14,...

Studies of the political determinants of economic inequality have usually focused on the national government, but in federalist systems subnational governments may also be important. In recent decades, the U.S. national government has been less active in fighting inequality, but increasing devolution means that states wanting to address this problem have had a greater incentive and perhaps mean...

The traditional theory of fiscal federalism prescribes a very limited tax base for subnational governments. The only "good" local taxes are said to be those (1) that are easy to administer locally, (2) that are imposed solely (or mainly) on local residents, and (3) that do not raise problems of "harmonization" or "competition" between subnational governments or between subnational and national ...

In recent years, a sizeable literature on subnational authoritarian regimes in democracies has emerged. some countries local enclaves have persisted despite the democratization of politics at national level. Even more intriguing, new emerged context level democratization. Finally, scholars noted that there is considerable variance regime durability between and within countries. This article wil...

1. The relative roles of the three tiers of government—the federal government, the state governments, and the local government authorities (LGAs)—in public service delivery has emerged as one of the most important topics of open and vigorous debate in the new democratic climate in Nigeria. There have been increasing calls for intergovernmental fiscal relations to be reassessed in light of a wid...

This paper shows how a popular system of federal revenue equalization grants can limit tax competition among subnational governments, correct fiscal externalities, and increase government spending. Remarkably, an equalization grant can implement efficient policy choices by regional governments, regardless of a wide variety of differences in regional tax capacity, tastes for public spending, and...

Background The implications of decentralisation on human resource for health management has not received adequate research attention despite the presupposition that the concept of decentralisation leads to the transfer of management authority and discretion for human resource management from national levels to subnational levels. This study aims at investigating the extent to which decent...