Intergovernmental Transfers and Public Policy in Federal and Decentralized Countries

In federal and decentralized systems, lower-tier governments typically have spending responsibilities. In those countries where regional and local governments collect their own taxes, those spending responsibilities tend to exceed own-source revenue. In other countries, subnational governments are entirely dependent on central government funding. Not only are subnational governments often dependent on central government financial support, there are also significant differences between subnational governments in their ability to generate and negotiate revenue. Moreover, the costs of service delivery often differ due to differences in structural and geographical conditions. To shed light on the politics of different tools to address such vertical and horizontal fiscal imbalances in multilevel systems, this panel invites empirical and theoretical studies on revenue sharing, conditional grants, and fiscal equalization in federal and decentralized systems and their policy implications across the world. It welcomes single-case studies as well as comparative approaches.