Many countries have adopted decentralization policies in order to strengthen democratic governance. Nevertheless, empirical literature on whether decentralization actually strengthens democratic governance is relatively limited when compared to empirical literature on the impact of...

Fiscal disparity leads to a yardstick bias, in that incumbents in fiscally-rich jurisdictions can provide more public goods, extract more rents and yet have a higher probability to be reelected. This study further emphasizes disparity among jurisdictions, not only in terms of fiscal resources...