Bringing Policy Back In: Territorial Politics as if Public Policy Mattered

Territorial politics can be, and is, studied from many in many ways. But what the most common approaches have in common is a relative lack of interest in the mechanics of public policy: the laws, resources, and money that make governments tick. This Paper, drawing on the findings of a four year collaborative project on the political economy of regionalism and the welfare state in the OECD’s federations, starts by identifying four linked questions about the nature of decentralization, territorial politics, and nationalism that can be answered by a focus on the details of programs and policies rather than high-level politics and law. Those questions are: Are there distinctive regional welfare states, or are regions basically different versions of a single state model? How much variation is there in the structure of welfare states- do functional imperatives as identified by economists restrict the kinds of options different states have, or is there a wide range of possibilities for ways to organize power and money within decentralized countries? Is federalism bad for welfare- does decentralization reduce welfare state generosity? And finally, does austerity centralize, decentralize, or leave alone welfare states? The answers in the paper draw on a level of analysis of programs, territorial and nonterritorial, that is missing in most territorial politics analysis, and bring together quantitative and policy analysis from eleven countries as different as Mexico, Austria, and the United States. Ironically, in the answer to each question the theme is that the state structures territorial politics. Looking at territorial politics through the lens of public policy foregrounds money, bureaucracy, and responsibility- which we might see as core parts of the modern state. It also therefore shows that regional variation, fascinating as it is, mostly depends on the broader state structures surrounding it.