Centralization versus decentralization of traffic law enforcement governance in Spain.

The current paper deals with the debate over centralization versus decentralization in road safety management, and specifically in traffic law enforcement. We address the case study of Spain, where a single traffic law acquis is enforced by two systems: road policing decentralized for some regions and national road policing for all others. Our econometric findings reveal that the Spanish regions with centralized traffic policing present better safety figures, which might be useful for reinforcing the coordinated performance of road safety policy in other traditionally decentralized countries. Furthermore, our evidence indicates that cautious analyses have to be carried out on a case-by-case basis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]