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This paper assesses the extent to which party systems are nationalized in four federations. In doing so, the research addresses two questions. First, is dual accountability operational across decentralized countries, or do sub-national voters turn to national cues as a means to economize in a complex information environment? By bringing a cross-national dataset to bear on this question, we are able to provide insight into where and why dual accountability might operate. Second, what explains variation in the extent to which party systems are nationalized across countries and time? We build on previous literature to suggest a number of factors likely to impact the extent of nationalization. We examine those factors in the context of provincial-level elections in Argentina, Canada, Germany and the United States. Using national and sub-national economic data, we find little evidence of dual accountability in any of our countries. We find that economic performance matters little for regional electoral outcomes, and where it does, sub-national outcomes reflect national rather than sub-national conditions. More important are the roles of partisan relations across levels of government and election timing. Sub-national co-partisans of the nationally governing party lose votes, particularly as the time from the most recent national election grows. The strength of these effects varies across our cases in predictable ways. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Although fiscal policies of central governments sometimes provide modest insurance against regional income shocks, this paper shows that procyclical fiscal policy among provincial governments can easily overwhelm these stabilizing effects. We examine the cyclicality of budget items among provincial governments in seven federations, showing that own-source taxes are generally highly procyclical, and contrary to common wisdom, revenue sharing and discretionary transfers are either acyclical or procyclical. Constituent governments are thus left alone to smooth their own shocks, and we document the extent to which various restraints on borrowing and saving undermine their ability to do so. The resulting procyclicality of provincial fiscal policy is likely to have important implications in a world where demands for countercyclical fiscal policy are increasing but considerable fiscal responsibilities are being devolved to subnational governments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article underlines federalism as a way for managing conflicts between central governments and subnational interests. It is specified that both the theoretical literature and the empirical record of federations make for opposing conclusions regarding the ability of federalism to prevent civil conflict. It is posed that the peace-preserving effect of federal traits, like fiscal decentralization and political copartisanship, depends on a society's ethnic composition and income level.

Research on comparative decentralization and federalism is a booming industry. Recent research integrates insights from political science, economics, and economic history in emphasizing the importance of incentives for the operation of decentralized government. Such work has focused particular attention on fiscal, representative, and party institutions. In reviewing the past decade's research, I make two arguments. First, the comparative research on decentralization and federalism provides a model for how comparative politics can address some of the most profound questions in social thought by focusing on a theoretically and empirically tractable aspect of governance. Second, although the research addresses many of the key questions in comparative politics, it also struggles with some of the same problems and challenges as comparative politics writ large, particularly the issue of institutional endogeneity. Attention to endogeneity is central to better understanding the workings of decentralized governments and providing less facile policy recommendations for the reform of places as diverse as the United States and Iraq. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the effects of federalism on macroeconomic management. Influences of the fiscal and political factors in federalism; Analysis of the level of fiscal decentralization; Determinants of fiscal balance and inflation.