Using panel data for a maximum of 109 countries over the years 1976-2000, we empirically analyze the impact of decentralization on the occurrence of transnational terror. Our results show that expenditure decentralization reduces the number of transnational terror events in a country, while political decentralization has no impact. These results are robust to the choice of control variables and...

Aaron Schneider is a political scientist at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. His research interests include comparative politics, public finance, and methodology. His current research projects include studies of federalism, decentralization, party systems, budgeting, and taxation. He has conducted research in Brazil and India, and plans to apply the measures der...

The traditional view of local politics and government in the Philippines is not flattering: elected officials are personalistic faction leaders (or worse, bosses or warlords) interested in parlaying their personal wealth and power rather than promoting good governance. Thus, it could be argued that decentralization by shifting power away from a reforming center to powerful irresponsible local p...

Article history: Received 16 August 2011 Received in revised form 5 February 2013 Accepted 12 February 2013 Available online xxxx This article examines the quantitative effects of the Chinese fiscal system on the increasing regional income inequality in China, from 1978 to 2007. Fiscal decentralization is a multifaceted concept not likely to be captured by a single measure. This paper investiga...

This paper integrates the distributive politics literature with the literature on decentralization by incorporating inter-regional project externalities into a standard model of distributive policy. A key finding is that the degree of uniformity (or "universalism'') of the provision of regional projects is endogenous, and depends on the strength of the externality. The welfare benefits of decen...

The international integration of markets and the decentralization of authority within nation states are two defining trends of the contemporary era. A popular speculation is that globalization has caused a downward shift in the locus of governance by reducing the economic costs of smallness and allowing localities and regions with distinctive preferences to pursue their own political and econom...