Party systems diverge in their levels of nationalisation. While in some countries parties obtain similar levels of electoral support in all districts, in others parties get very asymmetric electoral shares across districts. The distributive consequences of this have been seldom studied. The argument tested here is that when political parties have nationalised electorates they have stronger incentives to provide social policies that spread benefits all over the territory. This argument is tested in 22 OECD democracies for the period 1980-2006. The results show that, regardless of the electoral system in place, there is a positive relation between party system nationalisation and social spending.
Party systems diverge in their levels of nationalisation. While in some countries parties obtain similar levels of electoral support in all districts, in others parties get very asymmetric electoral shares across districts. The distributive consequences of this have been seldom studied. The argument tested here is that when political parties have nationalised electorates they have stronger incentives to provide social policies that spread benefits all over the territory. This argument is tested in 22 OECD democracies for the period 1980-2006. The results show that, regardless of the electoral system in place, there is a positive relation between party system nationalisation and social spending. Adapted from the source document.
AbstractParty systems diverge in their levels of nationalisation. While in some countries parties obtain similar levels of electoral support in all districts, in others parties get very asymmetric electoral shares across districts. The distributive consequences of this have been seldom studied. The argument tested here is that when political parties have nationalised electorates they have stronger incentives to provide social policies that spread benefits all over the territory. This argument is tested in 22 OECD democracies for the period 1980−2006. The results show that, regardless of the electoral system in place, there is a positive relation between party system nationalisation and social spending.
This article explores the impact of decentralisation on countries' fiscal outcomes paying attention to one aspect usually neglected in the literature: the relevance of local politics, proxied by party system nationalisation. Based on a wide sample of developed and developing countries over the period 1970–2011, our findings are threefold. First, both fiscal and political decentralisations have a virtuous effect on fiscal performance, improving general government primary balances. Second, there is no strong evidence that nationalisation by itself enhances national fiscal outcomes. Nevertheless, when fiscal decentralisation is coupled with a certain level of nationalisation, the former improves government fiscal balances. However, when nationalisation of party systems is extremely weak, all the disciplining effects of decentralisation tend to disappear.
This paper scrutinises local party system nationalisation beyond the national versus non-national dichotomy in the context of Belgium. Three main points stand out. First, a more close-knit assessment of the vertical autonomy of the parts comprising the system invokes the subtypes of national, pseudo-national, pseudo-local, and independent local lists. Applying this to all those who took part in the last two rounds of local elections demonstrates the Belgian municipal scene is predominated by lists having at least implicit links with a national party (even when their label is non-national). Second, this typology has been inserted to assess the nationalisation of the place-bound partisan assemblage. We have developed discrete indices of local party system nationalisation expressing the ratio between the subtypes outlined above in the electoral and the parliamentary arena. Scores pointed to relative local party system nationalisation, without reaching its alleged end-state. Nationalisation is also more prominent in the council than in the electoral offer. Third, the paper tried to explain variation in local party system nationalisation by considering the conjoined effect of place-bound social morphology and political ecology variables. Binary logistic regression shows that overall political ecology matters more (often) than social morphology (being more predictive for the parliamentary than for the electoral variant of the index). Also, further particular effects appear. First, morphological factors do not significantly increase the odds of the electoral local party system being nationalised. Second, specific morphological factors do matter for the parliamentary local party system to be nationalised. Third, the same specific ecological factors matter in the case of both electoral and parliamentary party system nationalisation. Here, the particular relevance of path dependency as the preceding degree of national party organisation comes to the fore. Ultimately, a substantial amount of variance remains unexplained. Herein lie the limits of a quantitative approach focusing on the effect of exogenous conditions on local party system nationalisation. To fully understand this, the interaction with endogenous within-party decisions should be tackled. Future research also needs to assess if, how far, and under which conditions our insights travel comparatively. ; U radu se istražuje nacionalizacija lokalne politike u belgijskom kontekstu. Problematici se pristupa detaljnije od tradicionalne podjele stranaka na nacionalne i nenacionalne, te se izvode tri glavna zaključka. Prvo na temelju analize vertikalne autonomije stranaka možemo zaključiti da postoje četiri podtipa liste: državne, pseudodržavne, pseudolokalne i nezavisne lokalne liste. Podjela sudionika posljednjih dvaju krugova belgijskih lokalnih izbora na navedena četiri podtipa pokazuje da prevladavaju, što se belgijskih općina tiče, liste koje su makar neizravno povezane s državnom strankom (čak i kada nemaju državni predznak). Nadalje, ova se tipologija koristi kako bi se procijenila nacionalizacija lokacijski ograničenog skupa stranaka. Razvijeni su indeksi nacionalizacije lokalne politike koji pokazuju omjer između navedenih podtipova u izbornoj i u parlamentarnoj areni. Rezultati upućuju na to da je riječ o relativnoj, a ne o potpunoj nacionalizaciji lokalnog političkog sustava. Nacionalizacija je izraženija u slučaju lokalnih vijeća nego lokalnih izbora. Konačno, u radu se nastoji objasniti varijacija u nacionalizaciji lokalnog političkog sustava razmatranjem zajedničkog učinka varijabli lokacijski ograničene društvene morfologije i političke ekologije. Binarna logistička regresija pokazuje da je politička ekologija (češće) važnija od društvene morfologije (predvidljivija je u slučaju parlamentarnog indeksa nego u slučaju izbornoga). Javljaju se i drugi učinci. Morfološki faktori ne utječu znatno na vjerojatnost da će doći do nacionalizacije izbornoga lokalnog političkog sustava, no pojedini morfološki faktori ipak utječu na nacionalizaciju parlamentarnoga lokalnog političkog sustava. Nadalje, isti ekološki faktori utječu na nacionalizaciju kako izbornog tako i parlamentarnog lokalnog političkog sustava. Tu je izražena važnost dotadašnjeg razvojnog puta i prethodnih odabira (path dependance) koji utječu na nacionalizaciju lokalne politike. Ipak, varijacija u velikoj mjeri ostaje naobjašnjena, što je povezano s ograničenjima kvantitativnog pristupa usmjerenoga na učinak vanjskih utjecaja na nacionalizaciju lokalne politike. Kako bi se postiglo cjelovito razumijevanje, valja proučiti interakciju s unutarnjim stranačkim odlukama. Buduća se istraživanja također trebaju usmjeriti na komparativnu primjenu rezultata - u kojoj je mjeri i u kojim uvjetima moguća.
The literature on party system nationalisation has yet to provide a better understanding of the impact of short-term factors upon the nationalisation of politics. This article helps to fill this literature gap by analysing the effect of economic conditions on party system nationalisation. The argument is that economic crises will decrease levels of nationalisation by amplifying territorial variation in preferences for redistribution, limiting political parties' capacity to coordinate divergent interests across districts and triggering the emergence of new political forces. Data on 47 countries for the 1960–2011 period confirm this hypothesis and show that lower economic growth during the years prior to the election is associated with a decrease in levels of party system nationalisation in the next election. The result is robust to variation in the specification of the econometric model and to the use of different measures of nationalisation. Results also show that federal institutions increase the impact of economic conditions on the nationalisation of politics, whereas any moderating effect of electoral system proportionality on the economy is not found ; We are grateful to the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation for research supportthrough grant CSO2013- 40870-R
