Federalism and Regionalism in Western Europe

Abstract

Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication 4 The Centre and the Regions: the Political Economy Approach 1. Introduction 2. Competence assignment in a federal state: an overview of three theories 3. Competence assignment in Western Europe: testing the three theories 4. The scope of federalism: expenditure and tax (de-)centralization 5. Vertical fiscal imbalances and why they arise 6. Vertical and horizontal fiscal imbalances and how they can be reduced 7. Regional spending, tax autonomy and equalization: an overview 8. ConclusionTables 1.1 Standard characteristics of a federation applied to six West European States 2.1 Overview of German regions (Länder) 2.2 Overview of the Spanish regions (Autonomous Communities) and their constitutional route to regional autonomy 2.3 The regions of the United Kingdom and their constitutional status 2.4 Contemporary Austria and its regions 2.5 The Belgian Regions and Communities 2.6 Switzerland and its regions 3.1 The Spanish regions and differences in constitutional status 3.2 Summary of distribution of legislative and administrative competencies and methods for changing that distribution 4.1 Distribution of competencies in Western Europe's multilayered setting 4.2 Public expenditure distribution in a multilayered setting 109 4.3 Typology of tax regimes (on the basis of four indicators) 110 4.4 Public revenue distribution in a multilayered setting 112 4.5 Regional tax revenues and vertical fiscal imbalances 113 4.6 Different tax sources and their corresponding tax type 121 5.1 General election results for state-wide parties and their regional breakdown 5.2 Ethno-regionalist parties and their electoral performance in the most recent general (and regional) elections 149 6.1 Patterns of IGR and their effects on policy change in six West European states 6.2 Composition and powers (with regard to ordinary legislation) of six federal/central second chambers 194 7.1 Citizens of the Spanish historic communities and their knowledge of the regional language 7.2 National identification in the Basque Country and Catalonia, 1979-2002 7.3 National identification in Belgium and the UK 277

Mitigating climate change in a federal country committed to the Kyoto Protocol: how Swiss federalism further complicated an already complex challenge

“…to implement federal policies (Wälti 1996;Freitag and Vatter 2002). Even in this form of ''executive federalism'' (Braun 2000;Swenden 2006), cantons have a large room to manoeuvre, mainly because few compliance mechanisms constrain them in ''adjusting'' implementation as they see fit (Klöti 2001: 21;Linder and Vatter 2001: 104). Regarding building policies, however, the cantonal room to manoeuvre is unrestricted because they have the rights to decide and to act on building standards and building subsidy schemes (Strebel and Widmer 2012).…”

Europe as a multilevel federation

“…Autonomist and identitarian movements map onto territory, creating a bottom-up regionalism. Faced with the need for functional capacity on the one hand, and bottomup pressures for more popular input, contestation of priorities and legitimation on the other, many states have instituted an intermediate, regional or 'meso' level of government (Keating [1998(Keating [ , 2013; Swenden [2006]). There also is a rescaling of the representation of social and economic interests and their reconfiguration at new levels, in response both to functional rescaling and the establishment of regional government (Keating and Wilson [2014]).…”

An empirical study of the complexity of requirements management in construction projects

“…Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data collected (Swenden, 2006;Boyatzis, 1998). It is regarded as one of the most common approaches to qualitative data analysis which often attracts a coding approach (Bryman, 2008).…”