Patterns of Regional Democracy. Government Forms and Performance in Federal and Decentralised West-European Countries

During the last thirty years, the combined processes of decentralization and Europeanization have strongly strengthened the regions in Europe as systems of representation, delegation and political accountability, endowed with specific parties and parties systems, with directly elected assemblies, executive powers and with their own public services. Today, many European regions can be conceived as fully-fledged democratic political systems and thus apprehend their institutional configurations through a comparative research approach and a assessment of classical hypothesis similar to those used for comparing countries. The aim of this paper to analyse how regions have adapted to these evolution processes by developing different schemes of institutional structures and how these variations can impact on their public policy capabilities. Our paper aims at applying the Lijphart’s approach (1999, 2012) to the regional political systems of federal and decentralised countries in Western Europe, while adding some variables specifically linked to the regional phenomenon. In this context, it is relevant to question not only the validity of Lijphart’s conclusions at the regional level, but also to assess the impact of the institutional configuration at national level on regional democratic functioning. This paper empirically investigates to what extent regional institutions and processes vary between themselves and, to what extent regional institutions correspond to the “majoritarian versus consensus” model. Our hypothesis is that the institutional form of West-European regions has an impact on their performance not only in terms of democratic processes, but also in terms of public policies achievements.