Bulletin n. 0/2004
December 2004
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
    • Freitag Markus, Vatter Adrian
    Föderalismus und staatliche Verschuldung. Ein makro-quantitativer Vergleich
    in Oesterreichische Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft , 2004/2 ,  2004 ,  175-190
    FEDERALISM AND GOVERNMENT DEBT. A Macro-Quantitative Analysis This article analyses the relationship between decentralised state structure and the extent of public debt in the Swiss cantons between 1984 and 2000. From a theoretical point of view, federalism can be associated with both, an expansive and a dampening effect on government debt. On the one hand, federal structures have been argued to lead to a reduction of debt due to inherent competition between the member states and the multitude of veto positions which restrict public intervention. On the other hand, federalism has been claimed to contribute to an extension of public debt as it involves expensive functional and organisational duplications as well as cost-intensive compromise solutions between a large number of actors that operate in an uncoordinated and contradictory way. Our statistical estimations show that the former effect is dominant: public debt tends to be lower in Swiss member states with a more decentralised political structure.
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