Studies of the political determinants of economic inequality have usually focused on the national government, but in federalist systems subnational governments may also be important. In recent decades, the U.S. national government has been less active in fighting inequality, but increasing devolution means that states wanting to address this problem have had a greater incentive and perhaps mean...

This paper analyses the impact of direct democracy, trust in government, the court and the legal system, and federalism on tax morale. In the tax compliance literature it is novel to analyse tax morale as dependent variable and to systematically analyse the effects of formal and informal institutions in Switzerland, a country where participation rights and the degree of federalism vary across d...

Governmental responses to Hurricane Katrina are generally cited as policy failures. Media and popular analyses focus on the federal government’s policy failures in hazard preparedness, response, and recovery. Meanwhile, disaster experts realize that disaster response is a shared intergovernmental responsibility. We examine the federal nature of natural disaster policy in the US to consider whet...

This paper discusses the findings of a multi-country study on the interaction of and Nigeria. We compare and contrast the division of expenditure responsibilities and taxation powers in the federations. The countries studied had a common pattern of centralized taxation and tangled subnational and federal responsibilities in many policy areas. The second part of the paper focuses on the dynamics...

This paper reviews the background, rationale, and prospects for India's recent reforms in the structures of local government. It begins by commenting on some dimensions of governance, and why it is useful to focus on decentralization, especially in the current Indian context. Then some of the theoretical arguments on federalism as an important mechanism for decentralization, as well as India's ...

This paper provides a comparative assessment of fiscal decentralization in China and India, including the standard components of expenditure and revenue assignments and institutions for intergovernmental transfers, as well as the nature of sub-national authorities over general economic activity. In particular, the case of China, where town and village enterprises have been very active, is contr...

The emerging economic federations of the European Union, Russia, and South Africa, along with the established federations in Australia, Canada, and the United States, confront the task of designing the institutions for federal fiscal policy. This paper reviews the literature on the design of tax policy in federalist economies. We conclude that taxation by lower level governments can lead to sig...

It must be admitted that the current analysis of Canada’s contemporary federalism is very often negative. One of the main criticisms being mentioned by intellectuals is certainly the fact that the country is organized around an ideal of territorial federalism, while Quebec would rather see it evolve into a truly multinational dynamic.1 The clash between these two conceptions is important; while...

This paper provides a comparative assessment of fiscal decentralization in China and India, including the standard components of expenditure and revenue assignments and institutions for intergovernmental transfers, as well as the nature of subnational authorities over general economic activity. In particular, the case of China, where town and village enterprises have been very active, is contra...