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

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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.