Comparing National-Subnational Relations in 8 Unitary States 1

Abstract

In most developed democracies, both national and subnational governments are directly elected by different aggregations of the sample people even if both elections take place on the same date. Some independently mandated governments sometimes succeed in enhancing subnational autonomy in public economic activity better than their cohorts. To explain this cross-sectional, temporal variation in centralization in public economic activity, I will first examine how different countries' constitutions codify national-subnational relations. Specifically, who has decision-making power regarding fiscal authority and how are these decision-makers selected across national and subnational governments? I will, then, explore what these constitutions do not specify but what has become institutionalized in intergovernmental relations. The main purpose of this paper is to compare national-subnational relations from perspectives of the legal-constitutional provision, administration, financial arrangement, subnational autonomy, and institutionalized intergovernmentalism in 8 unitary states, Denmark, Sweden, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, and the United Kingdom.