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Decentralization and Regime Transformation
Unformatted Document Text:  Decentralization and Regime Transformation by Pierre F. Landry Assistant Professor Department of Political Science Yale University P.O. Box 208301 New Haven, CT 06520-8301 Phone: 203/432-5016 Fax: 203/432-6196 Prepared for presentation at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association Panel 12-14: Decentralization and Public Service Delivery September 2, 2005 Marriott Hotel, Washington, D.C. Abstract: This paper explores the relationship between decentralization and democracy around the world. Based on cross-section time-evidence data that combines measures of fiscal decentralization with most complete dataset of authoritarianism and democracy around the world, I find evidence of a causal link between decentralization and democracy. Democracies are likely to favor fiscal decentralization. Moreover, the decentralization of fiscal expenditures further reinforces the likelihood of democracy. This feedback loop comes with twist, because revenue and expenditure decentralization have opposite impacts on the survival of regimes. Autocracies that develop the capability to decentralize revenue collection are likely to endure, as do democracies that decentralize spending authority. These findings help explain why some authoritarian regimes have pursed decentralization strategies in an era where decentralization and democratization seem highly correlated. As long as these regimes develop and maintain institutional mechanisms that allow them to extract taxes locally while at the same time limiting the discretionary powers of local politicians by centralizing expenditure assignments, authoritarian regimes can rationally adopt strategies of partial decentralization.

Authors: Landry, Pierre.
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Decentralization and Regime Transformation
by
Pierre F. Landry
Assistant Professor
Department of Political Science
Yale University
P.O. Box 208301
New Haven, CT 06520-8301
Phone: 203/432-5016
Fax: 203/432-6196
Prepared for presentation at the
Annual Meeting of the
American Political Science Association
Panel 12-14: Decentralization and Public Service Delivery
September 2, 2005
Marriott Hotel, Washington, D.C.


Abstract:
This paper explores the relationship between decentralization and democracy around the world. Based on
cross-section time-evidence data that combines measures of fiscal decentralization with most complete
dataset of authoritarianism and democracy around the world, I find evidence of a causal link between
decentralization and democracy. Democracies are likely to favor fiscal decentralization. Moreover, the
decentralization of fiscal expenditures further reinforces the likelihood of democracy. This feedback loop
comes with twist, because revenue and expenditure decentralization have opposite impacts on the survival
of regimes. Autocracies that develop the capability to decentralize revenue collection are likely to endure,
as do democracies that decentralize spending authority. These findings help explain why some authoritarian
regimes have pursed decentralization strategies in an era where decentralization and democratization seem
highly correlated. As long as these regimes develop and maintain institutional mechanisms that allow them
to extract taxes locally while at the same time limiting the discretionary powers of local politicians by
centralizing expenditure assignments, authoritarian regimes can rationally adopt strategies of partial
decentralization.


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