 A dirty deed done dirt cheap: Reporting the blame of a national reform on local politiciansAurélie Cassette and Etienne Farvaque Post-Print from HAL Abstract: This paper tests the hypothesis that upper-level governments can transfer the accountability of the costs of a reform to a lower one. The reform of the school week in France provides the ground for a verification of the attribution of accountability hypothesis, as it was nationally decided and locally implemented, right before a municipal election. The results confirm that local incumbents have taken the blame of the reform, especially in larger cities. In this case, thus, the cost of the reform is borne twice by the lower level of government, financially and politically. So doing, the central government does a dirty deed to the local ones, for a very cheap cost. That mayors who have announced a boycott of the reform have received electoral gains confirms that some local politicians expected to be the fall guys, bearing the brunt of the costs of the reform. Keywords: Reforms; Elections; Municipalities; School (search for similar items in EconPapers) Published in European Journal of Political Economy, 2016, 43, pp.127--144. ⟨10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2016.04.001⟩ There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01526021 DOI: 10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2016.04.001 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Post-Print from HAL |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.