3 results
10 - Conclusions and Lessons for Further Study
-
- By Jessica S. Wallack, Assistant Professor of Political Economy, Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, University of California, San Diego, T. N. Srinivasan, Samuel C. Park Jr., Professor of Economics and Chair of the South Asian Studies Council, Yale University; Senior Research Fellow, Stanford Center for International Development
- Edited by Jessica Wallack, University of California, San Diego, T. N. Srinivasan, Yale University, Connecticut
-
- Book:
- Federalism and Economic Reform
- Published online:
- 25 July 2009
- Print publication:
- 09 January 2006, pp 456-498
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
INTRODUCTION
What does the division of responsibilities and powers across levels of government – federalism – look like? How did it get to be this way? And how does federalism interact with the economic and political contexts, particularly growing integration with the international economy and ongoing economic reforms?
The chapters of this book seek to answer these three questions for a diverse array of countries. Argentina, Australia, Canada, China, Brazil, India, Mexico, and Nigeria span the full range of economic, political, and social contexts in which federalism currently exists. Nevertheless, there are some striking commonalities in their experiences with federalism.
This concluding chapter compares and contrasts three aspects of the countries' experiences with federalism. First, we discuss the division of expenditure and redistribution responsibilities, as well as taxation powers. The countries had a common tendency toward de facto (though not always de jure) centralization of control over expenditures. There were varying degrees of clarity in the assignment of responsibilities; in many cases, central and subnational government functions were interdependent so that subnational autonomy was limited. Taxation also tends to be fairly centralized in the countries we studied in this project, with subnational governments varying in the extent to which they exploit the tax bases assigned to them. The allocation of tax revenues, in particular whether all taxes were shared or only specific taxes were shared between national and subnational governments, appeared to influence all levels of governments' choice of taxes.
Public sector enterprises also complicated the picture in some countries.
1 - Analyzing Federalism: Stylized Models and the Political Economy Reality
-
- By Jessica S. Wallack, Assistant Professor of Political Economy, Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, University of California, San Diego, T. N. Srinivasan, Samuel C. Park Jr., Professor of Economics and Chair of the South Asian Studies Council, Yale University
- Edited by Jessica Wallack, University of California, San Diego, T. N. Srinivasan, Yale University, Connecticut
-
- Book:
- Federalism and Economic Reform
- Published online:
- 25 July 2009
- Print publication:
- 09 January 2006, pp 1-24
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
INTRODUCTION
How does federalism affect policymaking? How do the details of the division of policy authority as well as expenditure and revenue powers across levels of government affect prospects for efficient and responsive governance? How does the economic, social, and political context – especially the recent wave of globalization and domestic economic liberalization – affect the workings of any given federal arrangements?
These questions have given rise to a large and varied positive literature on the actual workings of federalism as well as a significant normative literature full of suggestions for how federations should allocate fiscal and other decision-making authority across several levels of government. The literature ranges from stylized models of the costs and benefits of different ways of allocating fiscal authority among social planners in closed economies to detailed research on the nuances of interactions among levels of government in particular countries, time periods, and policy areas.
On one end of the spectrum of research on federalism, national and subnational governments are assumed to act as benevolent social planners who are omniscient and omnipotent, with national planners capable of addressing any externalities from subnational social planners' actions that spill over from one region to another. Social planners at all levels are assumed to have all the relevant information and capacity for enforcement of their decisions. Opportunistic behavior is assumed to be nonexistent. Evaluating fiscal federalism in a closed-economy setting is another common simplification used to keep models tractable and implications for federal design and function clear.
Acknowledgments
-
- By Jessica S. Wallack, Assistant Professor of Political Economy, Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, University of California, San Diego, T. N. Srinivasan, Samuel C. Park Jr., Professor of Economics, Yale University
- Edited by Jessica Wallack, University of California, San Diego, T. N. Srinivasan, Yale University, Connecticut
-
- Book:
- Federalism and Economic Reform
- Published online:
- 25 July 2009
- Print publication:
- 09 January 2006, pp ix-x
-
- Chapter
- Export citation