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Trends in Decentralization

Christopher Ansell and Jane Gingrich

in Democracy Transformed?: Expanding Political Opportunities in Advanced Industrial Democracies

Demands for state decentralization are sometimes justified as bringing government closer to the people, thereby enhancing opportunities for political participation. This chapter examines ... More

Demands for state decentralization are sometimes justified as bringing government closer to the people, thereby enhancing opportunities for political participation. This chapter examines decentralization reforms across the 18 OECD countries in this study. It finds that there has been a general trend toward decentralization, though with considerable variation in the degree and kind of decentralization across countries. Majoritarian democracies and unitary states have undergone the greatest and most systemic decentralization, whereas decentralization in consensual democracies and federal states has occurred more at the margins. Reforms also differ in whether they are aimed primarily at achieving neo-liberal goals, such as greater competition and efficiency, or increasing citizen involvement and participation in local government.Less

Institutional Explanations for Political Support

Pippa Norris

in Critical Citizens: Global Support for Democratic Government

Substantial cross‐national variations have been demonstrated in political support/institutional confidence; the aim of this chapter is to investigate why these major differences between countries ... More

Substantial cross‐national variations have been demonstrated in political support/institutional confidence; the aim of this chapter is to investigate why these major differences between countries exist. It identifies at least three separate schools of thought seeking to explain this phenomenon: the role of cultural values, government performance, and political institutions. Comparisons are made among a broad range of political systems, drawing on the 1981–4, 1990–1 and 1995–7 World Values Surveys, the Latinobarometer and the Eurobarometer, and various support hypotheses are advanced (support for the party in government; dependence on level of democratization; differences between presidential and parliamentary systems (executive structure); variation with party system; differences between federal and unitary state structures; and variation with electoral system) and tested. The findings indicate that institutional confidence is most likely to be highest in parliamentary democracies characterized by plurality electoral systems, two‐party or moderate multi‐party systems, and unitary states, and that these relationships are confirmed even after controlling for differences in levels of economic development and post‐material values; social background and education are also related to institutional confidence, while the influence of socioeconomic status and gender are very modest. The results replicate one of the main theoretical principles of Anderson and Guillory (1997)—that winners express more confidence in the system than losers, and they also show that majoritarian institutions tend to produce greater institutional confidence than consociational arrangements.Less

Luxembourg: A Case of More ‘Direct’ Delegation and Accountabilit y

Patrick Dumont and Lieven De Winter

in Delegation and Accountability in Parliamentary Democracies

Featuring an indirect chain of delegation and a reasonable correspondence to the singularity principle, the Grand Dutchy of Luxembourg presents a number of characteristics that approximate the ideal ... More

Featuring an indirect chain of delegation and a reasonable correspondence to the singularity principle, the Grand Dutchy of Luxembourg presents a number of characteristics that approximate the ideal type of parliamentary democracy. The country is a unitary parliamentary monarchy with a unicameral Parliament, and it has never used a referendum in the post-war period. Yet, a number of domestic institutions and policy-making procedures deviate from this ideal-typical picture, including collective decision-making within the cabinet and executive-legislative relations. Another constraint has been the country’s involvement in international organizations and arrangements that continuously reduce its sovereignty and thus the significance of the national chain of delegation and accountability.Less

Sovereignty, Devolution and the English Constitution

Akash Paun

in Governing England: English Identity and Institutions in a Changing United Kingdom

This chapter argues that the UK territorial constitution rests upon a profound ambiguity about its central principles. Parliamentary sovereignty remains at the core of how the English understand ... More

This chapter argues that the UK territorial constitution rests upon a profound ambiguity about its central principles. Parliamentary sovereignty remains at the core of how the English understand their constitution. Yet in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, alternative doctrines have flourished, especially since devolution, which conceded the right of each nation to determine its own form of government (popular sovereignty) and established a non-majoritarian system of power-sharing and cross-border governance in (Northern) Ireland. These developments imply that the UK is a voluntary ‘family of nations’ not a unitary state. Yet Westminster has never formally conceded this point and devolution could in theory be reversed by a simple parliamentary majority. Constructive ambiguity has been retained. However, the historic tendency to allow constitutional theory and practice to diverge may be unsustainable in the light of the EU referendum result and the wider mood of English political disaffection that Brexit has tapped into.Less

Labour and the Governance of England

John Denham

in Governing England: English Identity and Institutions in a Changing United Kingdom

The 1997–2010 Labour Government introduced wide-ranging constitutional reforms, creating new democratically elected bodies and rights for UK citizens. However, the governance of England was left ... More

The 1997–2010 Labour Government introduced wide-ranging constitutional reforms, creating new democratically elected bodies and rights for UK citizens. However, the governance of England was left largely unchanged. With the exception of the Greater London Authority, no new democratic bodies were created for England, nor were any significant powers granted to local government. An extensive system of regional administration was created but then swiftly swept away by the incoming Coalition Government in 2010. England became the only part of the union whose domestic policy was determined by the UK Government. This chapter argues that this outcome was rooted in Labour’s traditions of political thought: its assumption of a unitary state, its centralist instincts, its distrust of local government and its reluctance to consider England’s identity and constitutional position within the union. It finds some evidence Labour is now taking the English Question more seriously, but old attitudes retain significant weight.Less

Constituting the UK

James Mitchell

in Devolution in the UK

United Kingdom constitutional development has never been uniform. The unions which contributed towards the establishment of the United Kingdom differed markedly. The most significant was that which ... More

United Kingdom constitutional development has never been uniform. The unions which contributed towards the establishment of the United Kingdom differed markedly. The most significant was that which created England. It was most significant for three reasons: first, it was the founding union; secondly, a unitary state was created and thirdly, England would become the largest component of the United Kingdom. This resulted in a widespread assumption that the United Kingdom was and is a unitary state, one and indivisible despite other quite different unions which contributed towards its creation. At its heart lay the notion that Parliament at Westminster was sovereign. Two different types of pressure have affected the territorial distribution. The first has its origins in how the state was formed. The second pressure came about as a result of social and economic forces which resulted in changes in state intervention.Less

Political Devolution and Credibility Constraints

Sonia Alonso

in Challenging the State: Devolution and the Battle for Partisan Credibility: A Comparison of Belgium, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom

This chapter introduces the second main thesis of the book. State parties threatened by the electoral growth of peripheral parties need to react in order to retain their electoral majorities or ... More

This chapter introduces the second main thesis of the book. State parties threatened by the electoral growth of peripheral parties need to react in order to retain their electoral majorities or pluralities. The threat will be larger the more disproportional is the electoral system and the more the electoral pluralities or majorities of the state party are concentrated in electorally relevant peripheral regions. An immediately available response is to tactically defend some of the policies of the peripheral parties’ programmatic agenda. This would allow the threatened state party to retain those voters that are close to it along the left–right dimension but who have intense pro-periphery preferences. The problem becomes that in centralized states the state party’s pro-periphery moves are so hindered by credibility constraints that programmatic convergence will not be an effective strategy. Devolution is a way to solve this problem since it allows transforming the tactical pro-periphery moves of state parties into a credible long-term electoral strategy. However, devolution does not make strategic sense in all circumstances; when and how it does is determined by the country’s electoral geography.Less

Bill Clinton’s “Russia Hand”

Strobe Talbott

in Conversations on Russia: Reform from Yeltsin to Putin

The interviews given by Strobe Talbott in December 2000 and early 2001 illuminate the critical policy choices driven by the personal chemistry between Clinton and Yeltsin. He responded with his ... More

The interviews given by Strobe Talbott in December 2000 and early 2001 illuminate the critical policy choices driven by the personal chemistry between Clinton and Yeltsin. He responded with his reaction to Putin's consolidating measures in early 2005. He was deputy secretary of state from 1994 to 2001 in the Clinton Administration and author of The Russia Hand: A Memoir of Presidential Diplomacy. He suggested in the interview that in order for Russia to survive as a unitary state, it must resume its development as a federal and a democratic state.Less

Defending Global Legalism

in The Perils of Global Legalism

Global legalism depends on the assumption that states comply with international law routinely or habitually, but it is hard to make sense of this assumption with traditional international relations ... More

Global legalism depends on the assumption that states comply with international law routinely or habitually, but it is hard to make sense of this assumption with traditional international relations methodologies that emphasize state interest. Many scholars have argued that international legal compliance of states is due to substate processes—processes that involve the interests, incentives, and values of people who operate the government or pressure the government. Disaggregate the state, find out what makes it work, and you will see that routine compliance with international law, and hence global legalism itself, is not hard to understand. Or so the legalists argue. This chapter, which examines and rejects this argument, first examines the difference between the unitary state hypothesis and the disaggregated state hypothesis. It then discusses the way that non-state actors (courts, government officials, interest groups, nongovernmental organizations, and citizens) may cause states to comply with or violate international law. The chapter also looks at international law versus international morality and the diffusion of norms, before concluding with a discussion on global legalism and the disaggregated state.Less

Formation of the Indonesian State

Arskal Salim

in Challenging the Secular State: The Islamization of Law in Modern Indonesia

This chapter traces the discourse between the nationalist groups and the Islamic groups on the formation of the Indonesian state in the important meetings of the Investigatory Committee for the ... More

This chapter traces the discourse between the nationalist groups and the Islamic groups on the formation of the Indonesian state in the important meetings of the Investigatory Committee for the Independence of Indonesia (BPUPKI) and the Preparatory Committee for the Independence of Indonesia (PPKI) in the early days of the new Republic of Indonesia in 1945. It emphasizes the concepts of the unitary state and the so-called fragmentary state, positing that there has been an ongoing contest between efforts to implement the unitary state ideal and attempts to turn Indonesia into a fragmentary state since the first years of Indonesia's independence.Less