Abstract
The previous chapters of the book have identified substantial and persistent patterns of variation in terms of local autonomy and its components across the 39 countries covered by the present study. This chapter seeks to explain the variation of local autonomy by trying to identify drivers of variation. Six hypotheses are explored in this regard with the database available. The hypotheses state that local autonomy varies in response to voter preferences, requirements of modernisation, state traditions, path dependency, games of multilevel governance, or citizen trust. State traditions, multilevel governance and citizen trust are the factors that best account for the cross-country variation in local autonomy.
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Notes
- 1.
The impact of population size on government structures as regards regionalisation has been investigated by Hooghe and Marks from a somewhat different angle (Hooghe and Marks 2012). They argue that (larger) population size increases communication needs concerning policy development; hence, larger countries tend to be more decentralised than smaller ones in order to facilitate “soft” communication.
- 2.
This finding is in contrast to that of Hooghe and Marks (2012), who found supporting evidence for a positive relationship between population size and decentralisation measured as regionalisation by the Regional Authority Index. The divergent findings may suggest that decentralisation to different levels of government may be driven by different sets of factors.
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Ladner, A. et al. (2019). Roadmap to Local Autonomy? Drivers of Variation. In: Patterns of Local Autonomy in Europe. Governance and Public Management. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95642-8_12
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