Decentralization, Elections and Subnational Politics

Abstract

Nearly half of the world's population lives under decentralised governance. This trend is also observed in Latin American nations. In the region, the subnational level of government plays a crucial role in shaping the experience of citizens, including access to public policies, electing representatives, and engaging in political and democratic processes. The aftermath of the democratisation across the region has provided unprecedented access to data at the subnational level of government, enabling political scientists to go beyond conventional national-level analyses. In this panel, we focus on the granular perspective offered by subnational politics, shedding light on the dynamics and behaviours of political actors. Scaling down from the national level reveals heterogeneous effects on democracy, public policies, party dynamics, representation, and elections. With this approach, we gain a nuanced analysis that helps us better understand the political landscape of specific cases and learn about the region as a whole. This panel features a diverse collection of papers that delve into a range of subnational contexts. It covers broad themes like variations in democracy and political inequality at the subnational level, as well as topics closely linked to local elections, such as innovative approaches to estimating party ideology and analyzing spatial-voting patterns. Embracing various subnational analysis perspectives, including case-study analysis, the comparative perspective of Latin American countries with nations in other regions, and multi-level analysis, the panel contributes to a broader and more profound understanding of the intricate relationship among decentralization, elections, and subnational analysis in Latin America.

Title	Details
The challenges posed by subnational data to measure party system change: the cases of Argentina and Brazil	View Paper Details
Political Inequality at the local level	View Paper Details
The Determinants of Subnational Democracy in Brazil	View Paper Details
Using campaign platforms to measure local party ideology in Brazil	View Paper Details
Spatial voting patterns in open-list proportional elections: a multi-level comparison	View Paper Details