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Federalism's Values and the Value of Federalism

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Author Info
Robert P. Inman
Abstract

What is it about federal governance that makes it so attractive to economists, political philosophers, and legal scholars and is there any evidence that would suggest all this attention is warranted? Proponents see federalism as a means to more efficient public and private economies, as the foundation for increased political participation and democratic stability, and as important check on governmental abuses of personal rights and liberties. This study provides a working definition of federal governance and classifies a sample of 73 countries as either a constitutionally-based federal democracy, an administratively-based federal democracy, a unitary democracy, a federal dictatorship, or a unitary dictatorship. Governance is then related to eleven measures of economic, democratic, and rights performance. Three conclusions follow. First, decentralized policy-making does have a unique contribution to make to a society's ability to enforce property rights, to protect political and civil rights, and then because of such rights protections, to enhance private sector economic performance. Second, while policy decentralization is the key to federalism's strong rights and economic performance and can be achieved within a unitary government by fiat, constitutionally established provincial (or state) governments provide an extra and important protective barrier for policy decentralization. Federal institutions protect policy decentralization, and policy decentralization provides federalism's valued outcomes. Third, federalism needs democracy; there is no evidence that adding policy decentralization or provinces to a dictatorship significantly improves a dictatorship's economic or rights performance.

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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 13735.

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Date of creation: Jan 2008
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:13735

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
H11 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Structure and Scope of Government
H77 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - Intergovernmental Relations; Federalism
P48 - Economic Systems - - Other Economic Systems - - - Other Economic Systems: Political Economy; Legal Institutions; Property Rights

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