Bullettin n. 1/2011
June 2011
CONTENTS
  • Section A) The theory and practise of the federal states and multi-level systems of government
  • Section B) Global governance and international organizations
  • Section C) Regional integration processes
  • Section D) Federalism as a political idea
  • Sorens Jason
    The Institutions of Fiscal Federalism
    in Publius: The Journal of Federalism , vol. 41, n. 2, Spring ,  2011 ,  207-231
    Federal and decentralized political systems vary in the extent to which sub-central governments enjoy policy authority, political independence from the center, and taxation powers. The institutionalist view of fiscal federalism holds that sub-central governments’ fiscal powers are meaningful and self-enforcing only when the central government cannot undermine regional authority. Most recent empirical research on fiscal federalism has ignored the institutional foundations of the system, with adverse consequences for measurement and interpretation. A new, institutional measure of fiscal federalism is proposed. Cross-national tests using this measure for thirty-nine democracies find that more fiscally federal countries, especially those with many competing jurisdictions, have smaller government consumption and government share of gross domestic product, while expenditure decentralization increases government size, findings consistent with widely accepted institutionalist theories.
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