Suchergebnisse

This article examines the relationship between territorial representation and fiscal redistribution in the European Union. Given that small states are vastly overrepresented in both the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers, models of legislative vote-buying predict that overrepresented member states will be systematically favored in the distribution of EU fiscal transfers. Empirical analysis of each manifestation of the EC or EU from 1977 to 1999 reveals a strong linear relationship between votes and transfers per capita during each period. This is true for both agricultural and regional development transfers as well as total net transfers. The paper concludes by reflecting on the importance of the connection between representation and redistribution as the European Union prepares to enlarge.

This paper uses cross-national data to examine the effects of federal fiscal and political institutions on the fiscal performance of subnational governments. Balanced budgets among subnational governments are found when either (1) the center imposes strong borrowing restrictions or (2) subnational governments have both wide-ranging taxing and borrowing autonomy. Large and persistent aggregate deficits occur when subnational governments are simultaneously dependent on general-purpose intergovernmental transfers and free to borrow-a combination found most frequently among constituent units in federations. Time-series cross-section analysis reveals that as countries increase their reliance on transfers over time, subnational and overall fiscal performance decline, especially when subnational governments have easy access to credit. These findings illuminate a key dilemma of fiscal federalism and a more precise notion of its dangers: When constitutionally constrained or politically fragmented central governments take on heavy co-financing obligations, they cannot credibly commit to ignore the fiscal problems of lower-level governments. ; Departamento de Economía

At the end of the twentieth century, academics and policymakers welcomed a trend toward fiscal and political decentralization as part of a potential solution for slow economic growth and poor performance by insulated, unaccountable governments. For the last two decades, researchers have been trying to answer a series of vexing questions about the political economy of multi-layered governance. Much of the best recent research on decentralization has come from close collaborations between university researchers and international aid institutions. As the volume and quality of this collaborative research have increased in recent decades, the time has come to review the lessons from this literature and apply them to debates about future programming. In this volume, the contributors place this research in the broader history of engagement between aid institutions and academics, particularly in the area of decentralized governance, and outline the challenges and opportunities to link evidence and policy action.

At the end of the twentieth century, academics and policymakers welcomed a trend toward fiscal and political decentralization as part of a potential solution for slow economic growth and poor performance by insulated, unaccountable governments. For the last two decades, researchers have been trying to answer a series of vexing questions about the political economy of multi-layered governance. Much of the best recent research on decentralization has come from close collaborations between university researchers and international aid institutions. As the volume and quality of this collaborative research have increased in recent decades, the time has come to review the lessons from this literature and apply them to debates about future programming. In this volume, the contributors place this research in the broader history of engagement between aid institutions and academics, particularly in the area of decentralized governance, and outline the challenges and opportunities to link evidence and policy action.

At the end of the twentieth century, academics and policymakers welcomed a trend toward fiscal and political decentralization as part of a potential solution for slow economic growth and poor performance by insulated, unaccountable governments. For the last two decades, researchers have been trying to answer a series of vexing questions about the political economy of multi-layered governance. Much of the best recent research on decentralization has come from close collaborations between university researchers and international aid institutions. As the volume and quality of this collaborative research have increased in recent decades, the time has come to review the lessons from this literature and apply them to debates about future programming. In this volume, the contributors place this research in the broader history of engagement between aid institutions and academics, particularly in the area of decentralized governance, and outline the challenges and opportunities to link evidence and policy action

This study is the first to measure urban-rural electoral divides in a way that facilitates comparisons beyond majoritarian democracies of the UK and North America. Based on national election results at the lowest available geographic level in fifteen countries covering roughly five decades, we present a measure for each election and political party, enabling comparisons over time and between countries with different electoral and party systems. We show that long-term increases in urban-rural divides have been most pronounced in the US, the UK, and Canada, but these divides have also emerged in several European multiparty systems in recent decades, largely because of growing smaller parties with predominantly urban or rural support. Overall urban-rural electoral divides remain lower in these systems due to continued presence of mainstream parties with geographically diverse support. Our contribution paves the way for a comparative research agenda on causes and consequences of urban-rural electoral polarization.

We analyze the relationship between accountability and polarization in the context of the COVID crisis. We make three points. First, when voters perceive the out-party to be ideologically extreme, they are less likely to hold incumbents accountable for poor outcomes via competence-based evaluations. Knowing this, even in the context of major crises, incumbents face weaker incentives to take politically costly measures that would minimize deaths. Second, there is a partisan asymmetry whereby the additional government intrusion associated with effective COVID response can be more politically costly for the right than for the left, because it undercuts the ideological distinctiveness that drives the base-mobilization strategy of the right. Third, this asymmetry generates incentives for politicization of COVID mitigation policies that ultimately lead to partisan differences in mitigation behavior and outcomes. To illustrate this logic, we provide preliminary evidence that COVID death rates are higher in more polarized democracies, and that in one of the most polarized democracies—the United States—COVID deaths have become increasingly correlated with partisanship.

Building on the unfinished research program of Gudgin and Taylor (1979), we analytically derive the linkage between a party's territorial distribution of support and the basic features of its vote‐seat curve. We then demonstrate the usefulness of the corresponding empirical model with an analysis of elections in postwar Great Britain, focusing in particular on the transformation of the Liberals from a territorially concentrated to a dispersed party in the 1970s. We show that majoritarian biases increase with the number of parties, and majoritarian systems harm small parties when their vote is more dispersed than average, and large parties when their vote is more concentrated than average. Moreover, the evolving experiences of Labour and Conservatives demonstrate how a party's territorial support, and hence its expected seat premium or penalty, changes with its electoral fortunes. This model has a wide variety of applications in multiparty majoritarian democracies around the world.