IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/gov/wpregi/1702.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Decentralization and electoral swings

Author

Listed:
  • Ignacio Lago
  • André Blais

Abstract

We explore how the uniformity of electoral swings in the district vote within countries is affected by the level of economic and political decentralization. We rely on district-level data from OECD countries in two consecutive elections before and after the Great Recession to show that as regional governments exert more influence over the central government districts deviate less from the overall pattern of change in the support of the national incumbent party. The causal mechanism accounting for the effect of decentralization on dynamic nationalization is examined with individual panel data from national elections in Canada and Spain.

Suggested Citation

  • 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.
    • Handle: RePEc:gov:wpregi:1702
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://infogen.webs.uvigo.es/WPB/WP1702.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2017
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Emilie Caldeira, 2012. "Does the System of Allocation of Intergovernmental Transfers in Senegal Eliminate Politically Motivated Targeting?," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 21(2), pages 167-191, March.
    2. Lublin, David, 2017. "Electoral Systems, Ethnic Heterogeneity and Party System Fragmentation," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 47(2), pages 373-389, April.
    3. repec:cup:apsrev:v:61:y:1967:i:03:p:892-892_28 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. 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.
    5. Alberto Alesina & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, 2011. "Segregation and the Quality of Government in a Cross Section of Countries," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(5), pages 1872-1911, August.
    6. Nannestad, Peter & Paldam, Martin, 1994. "The VP-Function: A Survey of the Literature on Vote and Popularity Functions after 25 Years," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 79(3-4), pages 213-245, June.
    7. Nannestad, Peter & Paldam, Martin, 1997. "The grievance asymmetry revisited: A micro study of economic voting in Denmark,1986-1992," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 13(1), pages 81-99, February.
    8. Stokes, Susan C., 2005. "Perverse Accountability: A Formal Model of Machine Politics with Evidence from Argentina," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 99(3), pages 315-325, August.
    9. Arulampalam, Wiji & Dasgupta, Sugato & Dhillon, Amrita & Dutta, Bhaskar, 2009. "Electoral goals and center-state transfers: A theoretical model and empirical evidence from India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(1), pages 103-119, January.
    10. Brancati, Dawn, 2008. "The Origins and Strengths of Regional Parties," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 38(1), pages 135-159, January.
    11. Israel Marques II & Eugenia Nazrullaeva & Andrei Yakovlev, 2016. "Substituting Distribution for Growth: The Political Logic of Intergovernmental Transfers in the Russian Federation," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(1), pages 23-54, March.
    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. Ignacio Lago & André Blais, 2018. "Decentralization and electoral swings," Working Papers. Collection A: Public economics, governance and decentralization 1805, Universidade de Vigo, GEN - Governance and Economics research Network.
    2. Ignacio Lago & André Blais, 2018. "Decentralization And Electoral Swings," International Center for Public Policy Working Paper Series, at AYSPS, GSU paper1804, International Center for Public Policy, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University.
    3. 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).
    4. Padovano, Fabio & Petrarca, Ilaria, 2014. "Are the responsibility and yardstick competition hypotheses mutually consistent?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 459-477.
    5. Bluhm, Richard & Thomsson, Kaj, 2020. "Holding on? Ethnic divisions, political institutions and the duration of economic declines," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    6. Jorge L D. Ferreira & Alexandre F. Alves & Emilie Caldeira, 2021. "Grants for Whom and Why? The Politics of Allocation of Transfers in Brazil," The Developing Economies, Institute of Developing Economies, vol. 59(1), pages 39-63, March.
    7. Linda Gonçalves Veiga, 2013. "Voting functions in the EU-15," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 157(3), pages 411-428, December.
    8. Ali, Amin Masud & Savoia, Antonio, 2023. "Decentralisation or patronage: What determines government's allocation of development spending in a unitary country? Evidence from Bangladesh," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    9. Stanley L. Winer & J. Stephen Ferris & Bharatee Bhusana Dash & Pinaki Chakraborty, 2021. "Political competitiveness and the private–public structure of public expenditure: a model and empirics for the Indian States," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 28(6), pages 1430-1471, December.
    10. 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.
    11. Gebhard Kirchgässner, 2016. "Voting and Popularity," CREMA Working Paper Series 2016-08, Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA).
    12. Maria EL KHDARI, 2015. "Déterminants des transferts intergouvernementaux : le cas des communes Marocaines," Working Papers 201531, CERDI.
    13. Kayode Taiwo & Linda G. Veiga, 2020. "Is there an “invisible hand” in the formula-based intergovernmental transfers in Nigeria?," NIPE Working Papers 02/2020, NIPE - Universidade do Minho.
    14. Pranab Bardhan & Sandip Mitra & Dilip Mookherjee & Anusha Nath, 2020. "How Do Voters Respond to Welfare vis-à-vis Public Good Programs? An Empirical Test for Clientelism," Staff Report 605, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
    15. Savu, A., 2021. "Reverse Political Coattails under a Technocratic Government: New Evidence on the National Electoral Benefits of Local Party Incumbency," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 2121, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    16. Berlemann, Michael & Enkelmann, Sören, 2014. "The economic determinants of U.S. presidential approval: A survey," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 41-54.
    17. Mihir Bhattacharya, 2018. "A model of electoral competition between national and regional parties," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 30(3), pages 335-357, July.
    18. Abel Fumey & Festus O. Egwaikhide, 2018. "Political Economy of Intergovernmental Fiscal Transfers: The Rural‐Urban Dynamics in Ghana," African Development Review, African Development Bank, vol. 30(1), pages 33-44, March.
    19. Isaksson, Ann-Sofie & Bigsten, Arne, 2014. "Clientelism and ethnic divisions," Working Papers in Economics 598, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    20. J. Stephen Ferris & Bharatee Bhusana Dash, 2023. "On the structure of the political party system in Indian states, 1957–2018," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 34(1), pages 1-35, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Decentralization; dynamic nationalization; electoral swing; Great Recession.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • R1 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics
    • R12 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity; Interregional Trade (economic geography)

    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:wpregi:1702. 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.