IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tuf/tuftec/0726.html

Federalism, Regional Redistribution, and Country Stability

Author

Listed:
  • Enrico Spolaore

Abstract

In recent decades a large number of new sovereign states has been created through secessions, decolonization and breakup of existing countries. Since 1990 the Soviet Union split into fifteen independent countries, Yugoslavia gave away to six sovereign states (not counting Kosovo), Czechoslavakia broke into two separate states, Eritrea seceded from Ethiopia, Namibia gained indepen- dence from South Africa, and Timor Leste left Indonesia. Today there are 193 internationally recognized sovereign states in the world, up from 74 in 1945 (the latest UN member is Montenegro, which joined in 2006). At the same time numerous countries, while remaining unified, have taken steps towards more regional autonomy and decentralization. Regional redistribution, decentralization and federalism have played a prominent role in political debates across Europe (e.g., in Belgium, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom) and all over the world--from Cananda to Colombia, from Nigeria to South Africa, from Iraq to India.

Suggested Citation

  • Enrico Spolaore, 2008. "Federalism, Regional Redistribution, and Country Stability," Discussion Papers Series, Department of Economics, Tufts University 0726, Department of Economics, Tufts University.
    • Handle: RePEc:tuf:tuftec:0726
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ase.tufts.edu/econ/research/documents/2008/spolaoreFederalism.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Thierry Madiès & Grégoire Rota-Grasiozi & Jean-Pierre Tranchant & Cyril Trépier, 2018. "The economics of secession: a review of legal, theoretical, and empirical aspects," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, Springer;Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics, vol. 154(1), pages 1-18, December.
    2. Enrico Spolaore, 2016. "The economics of political borders," Chapters, in: Eugene Kontorovich & Francesco Parisi (ed.), Economic Analysis of International Law, chapter 1, pages 11-43, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    3. Cerniglia, Floriana & Longaretti, Riccarda & Zanardi, Alberto, 2021. "How to design decentralisation to curb secessionist pressures? Top-down vs. bottom-up reforms," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 377-390.
    4. Tjaša Bjedov & Simon Lapointe & Thierry Madiès & Marie Claire Villeval, 2018. "Does decentralization of decisions increase the stability of large groups?," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 51(4), pages 681-716, December.
    5. Flamand, Sabine, 2019. "Partial decentralization as a way to prevent secessionist conflict," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 159-178.
    6. Vincent Anesi & Philippe De Donder, 2011. "Voting under the Threat of Secession: Accommodation vs. Repression," CESifo Working Paper Series 3458, CESifo.
    7. Vanschoonbeek, Jakob, 2020. "Divided We Stad: a Fiscal Bargaining Model for Divided Countries," MPRA Paper 101863, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    8. Deck, Cary & Foster, Joshua & Song, Hongwei, 2015. "Defense against an opportunistic challenger: Theory and experiments," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 242(2), pages 501-513.
    9. Dima Bogdan & Dima Ştefana Maria, 2016. "Policies for Happiness in the Global Village," Journal of Heterodox Economics, Sciendo, vol. 3(1), pages 17-53, June.
    10. Vanschoonbeek, Jakob, 2020. "Regional (in)stability in Europe a quantitative model of state fragmentation," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(3), pages 605-641.
    11. Vincent Anesi & Philippe De Donder, 2011. "Voting under the Threat of Secession: Accommodation vs. Repression," CESifo Working Paper Series 3458, CESifo Group Munich.
    12. Albert Solé-Ollé, 2013. "Inter-regional redistribution through infrastructure investment: tactical or programmatic?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 156(1), pages 229-252, July.

    More about this item

    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:tuf:tuftec:0726. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Marcus Weir The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask Marcus Weir to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://ase.tufts.edu/economics .

    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.