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Explaining Regional and Local Government: An Empirical Test of the Decentralization Theorem

Schakel, Arjan (2009) Explaining Regional and Local Government: An Empirical Test of the Decentralization Theorem. In: UNSPECIFIED. (Unpublished)

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    Abstract

    Decentralization of policy provision is omnipresent yet we are not able to sufficiently account for the extent of this phenomenon. The decentralization theorem explains the decentralization of policy provision as a trade–off between heterogeneous preferences, inter–jurisdictional spillovers (externalities) and economies of scale. Empirical tests of the theorem have been hampered by a measurement problem on the independent as well as on the dependent variable. This article tackles these problems by using a new dataset which combines a measure of externalities and scale effects of policies obtained from an expert survey with the actual provision of policies across governmental tiers in 40 countries. The analyses show that decentralization of policy provision is not solely determined by functional characteristics of policies but that heterogeneous preferences and other country specific variables such as democracy, economic development and European subsidies, also play a significant role. Hence, this article provides an empirical test of the decentralization theorem.

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    Item Type: Conference or Workshop Item (UNSPECIFIED)
    Subjects for non-EU documents: EU policies and themes > Policies & related activities > political affairs > governance: EU & national level > subnational/regional/territorial
    Subjects for EU documents: UNSPECIFIED
    EU Series and Periodicals: UNSPECIFIED
    EU Annual Reports: UNSPECIFIED
    Conference: European Union Studies Association (EUSA) > Biennial Conference > 2009 (11th), April 23-25, 2009
    Depositing User: Phil Wilkin
    Official EU Document: No
    Language: English
    Date Deposited: 19 Aug 2012 09:50
    Number of Pages: 46
    Last Modified: 11 Dec 2012 11:16
    URI: http://aei.pitt.edu/id/eprint/33127

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