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Replication Data for: Transferring Power to Maintain Control: Decentralization as a National-Level Electoral Strategy in Western Europe

Harvard Dataverse (Africa Rice Center, Bioversity International, CCAFS, CIAT, IFPRI, IRRI and WorldFish)

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Title Replication Data for: Transferring Power to Maintain Control: Decentralization as a National-Level Electoral Strategy in Western Europe
 
Identifier https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/JHHTXP
 
Creator Meguid, Bonnie M.
 
Publisher Harvard Dataverse
 
Description Why do national governments choose to transfer some of their administrative, political, and fiscal powers to regional authorities? This article develops and tests a nationally focused strategic account: decentralization is a targeted means to bolster a governing party’s national-level electoral strength by appeasing the voters of threatening ethnoterritorial parties in national parliamentary elections. Statistical analyses of decentralization across the subnational regions of Western European countries confirm that governing parties transfer additional competencies to regions in which an ethnoterritorial party threat exists, when the government is legislatively vulnerable. In contrast, if a government is not dependent on a region for maintaining national parliamentary control, the presence of a strong ethnoterritorial opponent will not motivate the government to decentralize. These findings help to explain patterns of asymmetrical decentralization across regions within a country and why governing parties decentralize competencies to subnational governments that they do not expect to control.
 
Subject Social Sciences
decentralization
ethnoterritorial party
Western Europe
strategy
 
Date 2024-01-29
 
Contributor Meguid, Bonnie