Over the past 50 years, an increasing amount of political authority has been delegated to the regional government level in Europe. This paper analyses regional demands for involvement in policy-making by focusing on the preferences of top-level regional civil servants (“regio-crats”). A...

The recent uprisings in the Middle East have cast doubt on the degree to which existing theories of autocracy can correctly identify which groups threaten the autocrats rule at any given time. As a result, these theories are unable to predict fundamental upheavals in established autocracies. Who...

Infolge der Regionalisierung von Wirtschafts- und Strukturpolitik entstehen entweder vollkommen neue Institutionen (horizontale Regionalisierung) oder Institutionen mit neuen Kompetenzen (vertikale Regionalisierung). Der Erfolg einer Regionalisierungspolitik läßt sich am Grad der...

Despite increasing co-operation between French municipalities, the structure of the local public sector may not have significantly changed. Although the central government expected that this co-operation would result in a decrease in the combined rates of municipal and inter-municipal taxation,...

In order to provide local public goods, municipalities can cooperate and exploit economies of scale and scope. We present an analytical model of the costs and benefits of two such forms of cooperation: Consortia and Unions. We find that the efficiency of these two forms of cooperation depends on...

In this paper it has been analysed whether and how the Agency for Territorial Cohesion, just recently established and intended to replace the Department for Development and Cohesion Policies, can fit in the complex system of multilevel governance envisaged as per the Community rules for the...

Desde que existen las comunidades autónomas no ha cesado el debate entorno a su modelo de financiación. ¿Es una historia interminable? Es evidente que el contexto económico, político y social es cada vez más cambiante y las políticas, modelos e instrumentos tienen que ir adaptándose a...

This paper studies comprehensive national panel data of local option sales taxes at the monthly frequency. I calculate state-by-month population weighted averages and standard deviations of local sales tax rates. I document ten stylized facts concerning the time series patterns and spatial...

Problems of intergovernmental policy coordination can take many forms and are becoming increasingly important with continuing economic integration. In this paper we focus on the fiscal competition problem where the non-cooperative choice of taxes and transfers among government typically leads to...