IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/gov/wpaper/2201.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Making countries small: The nationalization of districts in the United States

Author

Listed:
  • Ignacio Lago

Abstract

I rely on data from 31,754 electoral districts in the United States from 1834 until 2016 to explore how the nationalization of politics occurs within districts. I argue that in the early stages of the American democracy local concerns were more prominent in the distant districts from the capital city than in the nearby districts, and therefore the number of parties was greater in the former than in the latter. However, these differences vanished after the New Deal, when authority was centralized. Nationalization reduced the number of parties everywhere, but above all in the most distant district from Washington, D.C.

Suggested Citation

  • Ignacio Lago, 2022. "Making countries small: The nationalization of districts in the United States," Working Papers. Collection A: Public economics, governance and decentralization 2201, Universidade de Vigo, GEN - Governance and Economics research Network.
    • Handle: RePEc:gov:wpaper:2201
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://infogen.webs.uvigo.es/WP/WP2201.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2022
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Filipe R. Campante & Quoc-Anh Do & Bernardo Guimaraes, 2019. "Capital Cities, Conflict, and Misgovernance," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(3), pages 298-337, July.
    2. Chhibber, Pradeep & Kollman, Ken, 1998. "Party Aggregation and the Number of Parties in India and the United States," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 92(2), pages 329-342, June.
    3. Hicken, Allen & Kollman, Ken & Simmons, Joel W., 2016. "Party System Nationalization and the Provision of Public Health Services," Political Science Research and Methods, Cambridge University Press, vol. 4(3), pages 573-594, September.
    4. Thomas Hutzschenreuter & Philippa-Luisa Harhoff, 2020. "National capital city location and subsidiary portfolio expansion: The negative effect of geographic distance to the capital city at inception on the speed of subsequent investments," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 51(7), pages 1107-1132, September.
    5. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/11auergscg875893gvc2mtel3q is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Makarin, Alexey & Piqué, Ricardo & Aragón, Fernando, 2020. "National or sub-national parties: Does party geographic scope matter?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    2. Leopoldo Fergusson & Carlos Molina, 2020. "Facebook Causes Protests," HiCN Working Papers 323, Households in Conflict Network.
    3. Leopoldo Fergusson & Horacio Larreguy & Juan Felipe Riaño, 2022. "Political Competition and State Capacity: Evidence from a Land Allocation Program in Mexico," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 132(648), pages 2815-2834.
    4. Jean Forand & Vikram Maheshri, 2015. "A dynamic Duverger’s law," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 165(3), pages 285-306, December.
    5. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/4hgajj9cf48dladkd9pn9jcj4p is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Chakravarty, Dwarka & Goerzen, Anthony & Musteen, Martina & Ahsan, Mujtaba, 2021. "Global cities: A multi-disciplinary review and research agenda," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 56(3).
    7. Filipe R. Campante & Quoc-Anh Do & Bernardo Guimaraes, 2019. "Capital Cities, Conflict, and Misgovernance," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(3), pages 298-337, July.
    8. Luís Francisco Aguiar & Pedro C. Magalhães & Maria Joana Soares, 2010. "Synchronism in Electoral Cycles: How United are the United States?," NIPE Working Papers 17/2010, NIPE - Universidade do Minho.
    9. Bharatee Bhusana, Ferris, J Stephen Dash & Stanley L. Winer, 2018. "Measuring Electoral Competitiveness: With Application to the Indian States," CESifo Working Paper Series 7216, CESifo.
    10. Faraz, Naseem & Rockmore, Marc, 2020. "Election cycles in public credit: Credit provision and default rates in Pakistan," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    11. Ignacio Lago-Peñas & Santiago Lago-Peñas, 2009. "Does the nationalization of party systems affect the composition of public spending?," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 10(1), pages 85-98, January.
    12. J. Stephen Ferris & Stanley L. Winer & Derek Olmstead, 2018. "A Dynamic Model of Political Party Equilibrium: The Evolution of ENP in Canada, 1870–2015," Carleton Economic Papers 18-04, Carleton University, Department of Economics, revised 31 Jul 2019.
    13. Jean-Louis Keene, 2020. "Essays on political economy and development [Essais sur l'économie politique et le développement]," SciencePo Working papers Main tel-04125445, HAL.
    14. Tommaso Sonno, 2020. "Globalization and conflicts: the good, the bad and the ugly of corporations in Africa," CEP Discussion Papers dp1670, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    15. Massimo Morelli, 2004. "Party Formation and Policy Outcomes under Different Electoral Systems," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 71(3), pages 829-853.
    16. Mihir Bhattacharya, 2018. "A model of electoral competition between national and regional parties," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 30(3), pages 335-357, July.
    17. T. Clark Durant & Michael Weintraub, 2014. "How to make democracy self-enforcing after civil war: Enabling credible yet adaptable elite pacts," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 31(5), pages 521-540, November.
    18. Danchi Tan & Weichieh Su & Joseph T. Mahoney & Yasemin Kor, 2020. "A review of research on the growth of multinational enterprises: A Penrosean lens," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 51(4), pages 498-537, June.
    19. Jorge Martinez-Vazquez & Santiago Lago-Peñas & Agnese Sacchi, 2017. "The Impact Of Fiscal Decentralization: A Survey," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(4), pages 1095-1129, September.
    20. Ignacio Lago & André Blais, 2017. "Decentralization and electoral swings," Working Papers. Collection B: Regional and sectoral economics 1702, Universidade de Vigo, GEN - Governance and Economics research Network.
    21. Cole, Shawn & Healy, Andrew & Werker, Eric, 2012. "Do voters demand responsive governments? Evidence from Indian disaster relief," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(2), pages 167-181.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Country Size; Decentralization; District; Nationalization; United States.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H72 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Budget and Expenditures
    • H74 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Borrowing
    • H77 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - Intergovernmental Relations; Federalism

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gov:wpaper:2201. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Patricio Sanchez-Fernandez (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/geviges.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.