Validation of the Regional Authority Index

This article validates the Regional Authority Index with seven widely used decentralization indices in the literature. A principal axis analysis reveals a common structure. The major source of disagreement between the Regional Authority Index and the other indices stems from the fact that the Regional Authority Index does not include local governance whereas most other indices do. Two other sources of disagreement concern the treatment of federal versus non-federal countries, and countries which have recently regionalized and/or have asymmetrical regions, whereby the more fine-grained Regional Authority index captures greater variation. The second part discusses content validity of fiscal indicators.federalism;decentralization;regional authority; fiscal indicators

Rethinking party system nationalization in India (1952-2014)

This article provides a new conceptual and empirical analysis of party system nationalization, based on four different measurements. Unlike previous nationalization studies, these measurements conceptualize party system nationalization on the basis of electoral performance in national (general or federal) and sub-national (state) elections. After introducing these measurements we apply them to 16 general and 351 state elections in India, the world's largest democracy with strong sub-national governments. By incorporating state election results we are able to demonstrate that: (1) the pattern of denationalization in India has been more gradual than assumed in previous studies of party system nationalization; (2) denationalization in recent decades results less from dual voting (vote shifting between state and federal elections) than from the growing divergence among state party systems (in state and federal elections); (3) the 2014 general election result, although potentially transformative in the long run, provides more evidence of continuity than change in the short run

Validation of the Regional Authority Index

This article validates the Regional Authority Index with seven widely used decentralization indices in the literature. A principal axis analysis reveals a common structure. The major source of disagreement between the Regional Authority Index and the other indices stems from the fact that the Regional Authority Index does not include local governance whereas most other indices do. Two other sources of disagreement concern the treatment of federal versus non-federal countries, and countries which have recently regionalized and/or have asymmetrical regions, whereby the more fine-grained Regional Authority index captures greater variation. The second part discusses content validity of fiscal indicators

Multilevel governance

Multilevel governance is the dispersion of authority to jurisdictions within and beyond national states. Three literatures frame the study of multilevel governance. Economists and public policy analysts explain multilevel governance as a functionalist adaptation to the provision of public goods at diverse scales. Political economists model the effects of private preferences and moral hazard. Sociologists and political scientists theorize the effects of territorial identity on multilevel governance. These approaches complement each other, and today researchers draw on all three to explain variation over time and across space. The tremendous growth of multilevel governance since World War II has also spurred research on its effects. Multilevel governance has gone hand in hand with subnational and supranational elections, and has greatly diversified the arenas in which citizens can express their preferences. The effects of multilevel governance for ethno-territorial conflict are double-edged. On the one hand, multilevel governance provides resources for separatist movements; on the other, it opens the possibility for accommodation through shared rule. Finally, multilevel governance leads to greater subnational variation in social policy, yet also makes it possible for central and regional governments to coordinate policy

Language difference and regional authority,

First published online: 14 October 2020This paper draws on research in geography, linguistics, and political science to explain the incidence of language regions and their effect on regional authority. It conjectures a chain of mechanisms beginning with the physical and political barriers to human interaction and culminating with contemporary patterns of regional authority. Using data on 1767 regions in 95 countries, it finds causal power in the claim that the linguistic distinctiveness of a region reflects the ratio of internal interaction to external interaction. Finally, the effects of a language region for regional authority depend decisively on the openness of the political regime.The project was funded by the European Commission [grant number 2016.CE.16.BAT.079]

Measuring and theorizing regional governance

This symposium Regional Authority and the Postfunctionalist Theory of Governance engages two recent books on regional governance. The first sets out a measure of regional authority for 81 countries in North America, Europe, Latin America, Asia and the Pacific between 1950 and 2010. The second theorizes how regional governance is shaped by functional and communal pressures. These pressures are detected in many historical episodes of jurisdictional reform. These books seek to pin them down empirically. Community and efficiency appear to have tangible and contrasting effects that explain how jurisdictions are designed, why regional governance has become differentiated and how multilevel governance has deepened over the past several decades. The symposium consists of contributions by Kent Eaton, Jean-Paul Faguet and Imke Harbers followed by a response from the authors: Liesbet Hooghe, Gary Marks, Arjan H. Schakel, Sara Niedzwiecki, Sandra Chapman Osterkatz and Sarah Shair-Rosenfield, Measuring Regional Authority: A Postfunctionalist Theory of Governance, Vol. I. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016; and Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks, with Arjan H. Schakel, Sara Niedzwiecki, Sandra Chapman Osterkatz and Sarah Shair-Rosenfield, Community, Scale, and Regional Governance: A Postfunctionalist Theory of Governance, Vol. II. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016

Has the gender gap in voter turnout really disappeared?

According to conventional wisdom, the traditional gender gap in voting has disappeared or even reversed in most established democracies. Drawing on the existing literature on sex differences in political engagement and on pioneering voter turnout theories, this article questions the conventional assumption and hypothesises that women still participate at lower rates in less important elections. It systematically tests this hypothesis by exploring the impact of sex on voter turnout in different electoral arenas. The empirical analyses of two cross-national datasets (Making Electoral Democracy Work and the European Election Study) demonstrate that although there is generally no gender gap in first-order elections, women tend to vote less than men in second-order contests. This reflects women’s weaker interest in politics and their lower levels of knowledge about politics in second-order electoral arenas

India after the 2014 general elections:BJP dominance and the crisis of the third party system

This article critically assesses claims that India has entered a new party system after the 2014 general elections, marked by renationalisation with the BJP as the new 'dominant' party.' To assess these claims, we examine the electoral rise of the BJP in the build-up to and since the 2014 general elections until the state assembly elections in December 2018. Overall, we argue that despite the emerging dominance of the BJP, a core feature of the third party system -a system of binodal interactions- has remained largely intact albeit in a somewhat weaker form. Furthermore, by comparing the post 2014 Indian party system with key electoral features of the first three party systems, we conclude that the rise of the BJP has thrown the third-party system into crisis, but does not yet define the consolidation of a new party system