Making countries small: The nationalization of districts in the United States

Ignacio Lago

No 2201, Working Papers. Collection A: Public economics, governance and decentralization from Universidade de Vigo, GEN - Governance and Economics research Network

Abstract: I rely on data from 31,754 electoral districts in the United States from 1834 until 2016 to explore how the nationalization of politics occurs within districts. I argue that in the early stages of the American democracy local concerns were more prominent in the distant districts from the capital city than in the nearby districts, and therefore the number of parties was greater in the former than in the latter. However, these differences vanished after the New Deal, when authority was centralized. Nationalization reduced the number of parties everywhere, but above all in the most distant district from Washington, D.C.

Keywords: Country Size; Decentralization; District; Nationalization; United States. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H72 H74 H77 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 pages
Date: 2022-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-ure
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gov:wpaper:2201

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