This panel engages new research on subnational authority in Europe and beyond. The paper by David Dreyer-Lassen & Søren Serritzlew reports on a quasi-experimental study of how changing size and nature of local governments affect political competition. Charlie Jeffery uses German time series data to explore the extent to which sub-national party competition, socio-economic structure and economic performance explain policy difference from place to place within Germany. Michael Keating examines the territorial rescaling of business, trade union, agricultural and environmental interest groups in the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, France, Italy and Belgium. The final two papers report on a large-scale project measuring the evolution of regional authority across 81 countries over 1950-2010. Gary Marks, Liesbet Hooghe and Sandi Chapman identify several common trends: a) an increase in regionalization, b) continuing, wide, divergence, c) a broader and steeper rise in self-rule than shared rule, and d) a proliferation of asymmetric arrangements. Arjan Schakel, Gary Marks, Sara Niedzwiecki and Sarah Shair-Rosenfield examine the validity of the regional authority index, employed in the first paper, by comparing it with several other measurements of (fiscal) federalism and decentralization.
The discussants are Michael Tatham and Michael Bauer, and Michael Bauer has agreed to chair.