The Politics of Local Autonomy: Measuring Cantonal (De)centralisation in Switzerland

摘要

In Switzerland, there are 26 systems of cantonal decentralisation because regulating municipal autonomy is an exclusively cantonal competency. Existing measures of local autonomy/cantonal decentralisation are confined to measuring the real or perceived distribution of functions. Alternatively, they weigh expenditures (Dafflon 199213. Dafflon, B. 1992. a??L'autonomie fiscale communale: le cas de Fribourga??. In L'avenir de l'autonomie communale ? l'aube du troisi?¨me mill??naire, Edited by: Weibel, E. 25-43. Fribourg: Editions universitaires. View all references) or tax revenues (Dlabac and Schaub forthcoming16. Dlabac, O. and Schaub, H.-P. forthcoming. The quality of democracy in the Swiss cantons: a dataset Institute for Political Science, University of BerneView all references) of municipalities against those of the canton. Complementing these indices, this paper additionally measures the politics dimension of cantonal decentralisation. Seven aspects are measured: intra-cantonal regionalism, cumul des mandats (double tenure of cantonal MP and mayoral office), territorial quotas for legislative and executive elections, direct local representation and lobbying, party decentralisation, the number and size of constituencies, and direct democracy (communal referendum and initiative). This results in a ranking of all 26 cantons as regards the politics of local autonomy within their political systems. The measure will help scholars to test assumptions held for decentralisation in general, be it as a dependent (explaining decentralisation) or as an independent variable (decentralisationa??so what?), within but also beyond the Swiss context.View full textDownload full textRelated var addthis_config = { ui_cobrand: "Taylor & Francis Online", services_compact: "citeulike,netvibes,twitter,technorati,delicious,linkedin,facebook,stumbleupon,digg,google,more", pubid: "ra-4dff56cd6bb1830b" }; Add to shortlist Link Permalink http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13562576.2011.692579