Policy Making in Multilevel Systems
Edited by André Kaiser, Annika Hennl, and Jan Biela
September, 2012
Cloth, 240 pages,
ISBN: 978-1-907301-33-9
ECPR
$105.00
So far, we know relatively little about the effects of different varieties of the territorial organization of politics on policy making and policy outputs. Starting from the hypothesis that decentralized policy making has positive effects whereas federalism has a slightly negative impact on policy performance, this book systematically tests the independent and interdependent effects of different combinations of federal/unitary and decentralized/centralized structures of decision making and implementation. Based on a mixed methods design it first quantitatively tests the relationships for the OECD countries in cross-sectional as well as panel designs. In a second step, qualitative case studies are conducted for four countries: federal-centralized Austria, federal-decentralized Switzerland, unitary-decentralized Denmark, and unitary-centralized Ireland. The authors study two space-related policy areas, both with regard to the decision making and the implementation stage of the policy making process: regional economic policy and transport policy.
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About the Author
Jan Biela is a Doctoral Student in Political Science and participated in the research project "Federalism and Decentralization as Dimensions of State Activity" at the University of Cologne. At present, he is a research assistant at the University of Lausanne and a member of the NCCR Democracy Graduate School, University of Zurich. His research interests include issues of delegation, representation, and accountability, participatory democracy, regulatory agencies, and comparative federalism.Annika Hennl is a Doctoral Student and Research Associate in Political Science, Department of Political Science at the University of Cologne. She participated in the research project "Federalism and Decentralization as Dimensions of State Activity". Her research interests include micro and macro effects of electoral systems and candidate selection as well as comparative federalism. She has recently published in Electoral Studies, Politische Vierteljahresschrift, and Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft.André Kaiser is Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Cologne and Faculty in the International Max Planck Research School "The Social and Political Constitution of the Economy", the Cologne Graduate School in Management, Economics and Social Sciences and the Cologne Research Training Group "Social Order and Life Chances in Cross-National Comparison". His recent publications include Mehrheitsdemokratie und Institutionenreform (2002), Demokratietheorie und Demokratieentwicklung (2004), New Labour und die Modernisierung Großbritanniens (2006) and articles, among others, in American Journal of Political Science, Electoral Studies, European Journal of Political Theory, European Union Politics, Journal of Legislative Studies, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Party Politics, Political Studies, Politische Vierteljahresschrift, Regional and Federal Studies, West European Politics, and Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft. His research focuses on the relevance of institutions for political action.
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