question then is why this has not happened in China. We argue that the answer lies in the degree of political centralization … result, the central government has been in a strong position both to reward and to punish local administrations, reducing … emergence of a partly dysfunctional democracy. The central government has been neither strong enough to impose its views, nor …

We provide a model with a federal government and multiple local governments, the former with power to levy an income … public good. Policy is set by majority choice at each tier of government by households that differ by income and ability to …

attendance. In particular, the common perception that centralization of public school finance will necessarily lead to greater … centralization involves an extreme equalization of the kind observed in California. Furthermore, if centralization occurs through … schools in centralizing states imply that general public school quality does not drop as a result of such centralization …

pluralism with privilege to the absence of both. They worried that centralization, democratic or otherwise, might be the …

a strong association between pre-colonial centralization and contemporary comparative development both across and within … countries. We also document that the strong link between pre-colonial political centralization and regional development -as …

policy choice to discourage free-riding. We then study a clumsy central government that harmonizes final policy choices. This …

We use variation in historical state centralization to examine the impact of institutions on cultural norms. The Kuba …

In this paper we investigate the empirical correlates of political centralization using data from the Standard Cross … the importance of high population density, inter-state warfare and trade as factors leading to political centralization …. We find that while in the whole world sample these factors are indeed positively correlated with political centralization …

national state based on the political agenda effect. State centralization induces citizens of different backgrounds, interests … investments in conflict capacity. In the absence of state centralization, citizens do not necessarily band together because of … social democratic party may sometimes induce state centralization (by removing the commitment value of a non …