Conceptualizing and measuring congruence between regional and national governments

Paper proposal for consideration of panel 3 on ‘Political Parties and Party Competition in Multilevel States’. The rise of regional government has induced a great scholarly interest into the question whether regional authority impacts on territorial inequalities regarding policy outputs and outcomes (Toubeau and Kleider 2022). Two key characteristics of this literature is that scholars tend to include federal (Austria, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland) and regionalized (Italy and Spain) countries and the main independent variable is often incongruence between regional and national governments. In this paper we argue that existing measurements of incongruence are neither reliable or valid indicators of government incongruence. Our criticism concerns two main caveats which arise out of insufficient knowledge about regional electoral systems and the relationships between regional parliaments and executives. For example, a focus on executives is not sufficient to tap government incongruence and one need to include parliaments as well. For example, in Italy and France regional presidents head the regional executive and exercise all executive powers but they also always rely on parliamentary majorities even in Italy where regional presidents are directly elected. Second, the inclusion of unitary and more centralized countries is necessary to find the scope conditions under which regional authority and government incongruence (can) produce territorial inequalities regarding policy outputs and outcomes. Importantly, parliamentary-executive relations differ substantially from those in regions in federal and regionalized countries as well as those at the national level. For example, regional executives may be dual and include centrally appointed officials (Dutch provinces) or regional executives share authority with another central authority in the region (counties in Norway and Sweden). In some regions, the mayor is not only the head of the regional executive but is also the chair of important and obligatory committees of the parliament (Danish regions) whereas in other regions the regional executive is single headed but its decisions need to be cleared by a centrally appointed official (French regions). Finally, through exploratory analyses we reveal significant variation in parliamentary-executive relations and government incongruence across regions and countries, as well as over time. Furthermore, we tentatively assess how regional identity, regional authority, and regional electoral institutions relate to parliamentary-executive relations and government incongruence.