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
    • Dietmar Braun
    How Centralized Federations Avoid Over-centralization
    in Regional and Federal Studies , Volume 21, Issue 1 ,  2011 ,  35 - 54
    The focus of this article is centralized types of federations that have been neglected both in the economic literature on federalism and in comparative federal studies. The starting point is that countries with centralized institutional solutions are subject to encroaching behaviour by the central government and are threatened with shifting further towards 'over-centralization'. 'Over-centralization' reduces federal member states to pure 'agents' of central government. By comparing four federal countries subject to centralization trends (Australia, Austria, Germany and Switzerland) and combinations of causal factors, an attempt is made to ascertain why some federations are locked in 'over-centralized' institutional solutions while others are able to ward off such an outcome.
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