Attitudes to Decentralization in Multi-Level States

There has been a worldwide trend over the last few decades to decentralise decision-making powers from central authorities to more local ones (Hopkin and Van Houten 2009, Sorens 2009, Rodriguez-Pose and Krøijer 2009). This political shift towards decentralisation arguably often coincides with tensions over the multi-level governance structures that are, or desired to be, in place. From Spain to Romania, Turkey to Indonesia, Canada to South Africa, a wide variety of countries has attempted to deal with ethnic and regional diversity through the devolution of political powers, hoping to develop at once efficient and popular governance structures. While political decentralisation is a process that has been undertaken in a wide range of countries, even becoming a main element of political discourse in some cases, there exists a considerable gap in our knowledge regarding citizens’ attitudes towards territorial scales of political life. The result of this void is that scholars, and policy-makers, lack a thorough sense of citizens’ affinity to the different territorial levels, to their understanding of the characteristics of the multi-levels structures that govern them, and to the level of decentralisation that they support. The proposed Workshop will assemble Papers that further our understanding of multi-level governance by assessing citizens’ attitudes towards different facets of decentralisation. The decentralisation of power from the state to regional and local levels represents an important issue for most countries. The salience of the topic makes grasping the predictors of citizens’ attitudes towards different facets of devolution particularly interesting. The recent constitutional crisis in Catalonia, for example, has demonstrated the risks to social stability that can be associated to dissatisfaction or detachment with existing multi-level governance structures. Yet, multi-level governance is much more than the existence of governance structures with effective regionalised political power at the sub-state level. It is about the sharing of powers that effect citizens’ everyday life. The concept of fiscal decentralisation not only determines the spending capacity of the different levels of government in social programs, who gets the credit for improving citizens’ lives; it also establishes the ability of governing structures to intervene in the economy, to mould it in a certain ideological image and help it in times of crisis. But decentralisation is also about culture; specifically, whether the sub-state unit has the political power to voice a different culture, or even to develop one, from the central state. While attention is often paid to the affairs between the central government and the sub-state entities, centre-periphery relations, the growth of regions’ political power also means greater importance for their relationships. Primordial to understanding these relations are issues related to inter-regional solidarity. Cooperation between different regions implies the recognition and willingness to share resources and wealth from one region to another as well as seeking to work together to achieve common goals. To complicate matters, attitudes towards decentralisation can be inconsistent. Citizens might well wish the region to be more powerful, but still want policy uniformity across the state (Henderson, Jeffery, Wincott and Wyn Jones 2013). So far, the sources of this inconsistency remains unclear. Additionally, rarely are such debates over decentralisation simply a rational deliberation over governing procedures and administrative jurisdictions. Rather, they are often an affective confrontation between different levels of identification. For some, the country is the nation; while for others, the region is the nation. While focus needs to be placed on understanding the development of citizens’ preferences towards decentralisation, the political consequences of the positions should not be disregarded. Although recent studies have shown that attitudes towards decentralisation can determine vote choice (Henderson et al. 2014, Oberhofer et al. 2014, Gauvin, Chhim, and Medeiros 2016, Medeiros, Gauvin, and Chhim 2015), these have been constrained to a limited number of cases. Such an influence on political behaviour should theoretically be more widespread and, even, not limited to regions with strong nationalist movements. However, at present, there is a lack of empirical knowledge on the influence of attitudes towards decentralisation on political behaviour. Furthermore, our understanding of decentralisation is blurry due in part to a blind spot in empirical research. While survey research has so far concentrated on the determinants that lead ethnic or regional minorities to demand greater autonomy from central authorities (see, for example, Denver 2002, Guinjoan and Rodon 2014, Nadeau and Fleury 1995), the essential role of national majorities to support or oppose greater power to the regional level remains somewhat underexplored. This is peculiar because multi-level governance structures, and changes to them, necessitate the acceptance of a wide range of citizens within a polity. Multi-level governance thus covers a range of political components. Notwithstanding, the current understanding of the factors that lead citizens to develop particular attitudes towards decentralisation as well as the manner in which these attitudes influence political behaviour remain relatively underexplored. This Workshop will assemble studies that further our understanding of citizens’ attitudes towards decentralisation.