Fiscal federalism and American exceptionalism: why is there no federal equalisation system in the United States?

Daniel Béland and André Lecours

Journal of Public Policy, 2014, vol. 34, issue 2, 303-329

Abstract: This article addresses the absence of a federal equalisation programme in the United States, which is a significant aspect of “American exceptionalism”. Comparing the United States with Australia and Canada, we argue that three factors are relevant when accounting for this absence. On one hand, we turn to two societal factors to explain why there was never much political appetite for the creation of a stand-alone equalisation programme in the United States, namely the lack of a direct threat to the territorial integrity of the United States after 1865 and the comparative weakness of the idea of social citizenship in that country. On the other hand, our analysis shows that key institutional features of American political institutions, particularly strong bicameralism combined with the absence of formal party discipline, help illuminate why it would have been difficult to create an equalisation programme even if there had been some societal pressures to do so.

Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:jnlpup:v:34:y:2014:i:02:p:303-329_00

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Public Policy from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().