Party Competition over Decentralisation

What is it about?

This article asks why some parties talk about decentralization during elections while others do not. We investigate this topic because knowing about the ‘mind-set’ of political actors is necessary for understanding the reforms that have led to the transfer of power to regions. If we want to know why and how reforms happen, we need to know how they become issues in the first place. Using data on party manifestos, we show that whether parties talk about decentralisation is shaped by their ideology and their strategic incentives.

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Why is it important?

Our findings show that politics is crucial for understanding institutional reforms. Rather than being driven purely by needs or economic differences or social divisions, reforms that transfer powers to regions are shaped by political parties. They decide whether or not to make this an issue during election campaigns in function of how much importance they attach to cultural rather than economic issues, of whether there are large ethnic groups and there is an electoral threat from the regionalist parties that represent them and of whether other parties talk about this issue as well. Parties are therefore clearly sensitive to their strategic context when they decide the issues on which to focus

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