Federalism, distributive politics and representative democracy

Guillaume Cheikbossian

Economics of Governance, 2000, vol. 1, issue 2, 105-122

Abstract: We analyze federal systems of government in which local public policies are financed by general taxation. In a decentralized political system there is, in each region, a vote to elect a local representative while in a centralized political system a single representative is elected by a federal vote. It is shown that under decentralization, voters strategically elect liberal representatives so as to nullify any element of cooperation between representatives in the decision-making stage. Thus, there is a trade-off between the budgetary externality and a “policy closer to the people”, but the democratic choice is biased towards decentralization. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2000

Keywords: JEL Classification:H30; H72; H73; Key words:Federalism; Distributive Politics; Strategic Voting; Decentralization; Local Public Goods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2000
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:ecogov:v:1:y:2000:i:2:p:105-122

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