Accountability and Attribution of Responsibility in Decentralised States

Abstract

The literature on decentralisation and federalism remains undecided on whether multilevel governance represents more of a challenge, or an opportunity, for democratic accountability. Those more skeptical about decentralisation’s vaunted advantages stress that it undermines accountability by blurring lines of responsibility between different levels of government and weakening economic voting. This panel invites papers that study the impact of multilevel governance on responsibility attribution as well as on individual vote choices. Some of the research questions we would like explore are: How do citizens attribute responsibility for policy outcomes in multilevel states? Do citizens distinguish areas of responsibility between different levels of government? Does responsibility attribution moderate the effect of voters’ evaluations of real-word conditions on their vote choice? Is national economic voting weaker in decentralised countries than in unitary ones? As most of the research developed in this area has been predominantly case-specific, papers that adopt a comparative perspective are specially welcomed.

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