Why do national parties decentralize political authority? An analysis of ideological and electoral party motives on the territorial dimension

我们的后续应用追求与第一个研究阶段完全相同的目标--系统地了解权力下放改革的动机。第一阶段的证据引导我们处理进一步的问题：第一，研究区域和国家各方对权力下放的偏好变化；第二，在多个层面上改变偏好所造成的长期动态。我们假设，国家政府和地区政党之间的意识形态距离系统性地影响着地区层面的权力需求。我们的研究结果表明，从中期来看，鉴于国家政党的基本意图，许多权力下放改革未能证明是成功的。因此，国家政党的学习效应可能会导致权力下放意愿的全面下降。我们打算在分析分权政治制度的长期发展时将这两个方面结合起来。在以行动者为中心的历史制度主义传统中，我们分析了分散化时期的序列模式。这些模式将被用来解决权力下放决定对政治制度稳定性的长期影响。历史和比较案例研究表明，正在进行的权力下放趋势从根本上改变了现代民主政体中政党的行为者星座。在大多数情况下，领土紧张局势加剧了政党制度的两极分化，而且在几个层面上越来越严重--对政治稳定造成了不利后果。我们在第一个项目阶段的发现以及由此产生的数据集使我们能够有效地分析突出显示的关系。

Our follow-up application pursues the very same aim as in the first research phase - a systematic understanding of the motives for decentralization reforms. Evidence from the first phase leads us to address further issues: first, the study of preference changes of regional and national parties towards decentralization; second, the long-term dynamics caused by changing preferences on multiple levels. We hypothesize that ideological distance between national governments and regional parties systematically affects authority demand from the regional level. Observations from our research suggest that in the medium term many decentralization reforms fail to prove successful in light of the underlying national partys intentions. Learning effects of national parties, therefore, might lead to an overall decline in the willingness to decentralize. We intend to integrate both aspects in the analysis of long-term developments of decentralized political systems. In the tradition of actor-centered Historical Institutionalism we analyze patterns of sequences in periods of decentralization. These patterns will be used to causally address long-term effects of decentralization decisions on the stability of political systems. Historical as well as comparative case studies suggest that the ongoing decentralization trend fundamentally changes actor constellation of political parties in modern democracies. In the majority of cases territorial tensions add to the polarization of party systems, and increasingly so on several levels - with detrimental consequences for political stability. Our findings from the first project phase as well as the resulting dataset allow an efficient analysis of the highlighted relationships.