Geoscience Reference
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Recall the key predictions from expressions (6) and (7). First, the probability
of agreeing to an institutional change increases the electoral price of intraparty
conflict (
). Second, as the value attached by regional leaders to the incumbency
of the national executive increases, the probability that they accept a change
toward higher levels of fiscal integration also increases. In contrast, as the
importance of national political contests rises, the probability that the national
party elite agrees to decentralize redistribution declines.
These results have important implications for the patterns of coalition forma-
tion among the groups identified earlier. Building on the seminal contributions
by Cr emer and Palfrey ( 1999 , 2000 ), the parameters capturing the electoral
cost of cross-jurisdictional conflict (
μ
μ
) and the balance between the interests
of national and local elites (
) define the political playing field in the event
of increasing distributive tensions among territories and income groups. A key
distinction here is whether the way coalitions are formed is centrifugal , that
is tailored toward the representation of territorialized interests, or centripetal ,
that is set up to increase the incentives of political actors tomobilize the interests
of social groups that cut across subnational territorial boundaries. Centrifugal
representation corresponds to very low values of both
. In contrast,
centripetal representation implies the preeminence of political competition at
the national level (high values of
μ
and
) and very high electoral costs for conflictive
regional elites.
At the extreme of centrifugal representation (
), there is little
or no salience of national elections and virtually no cost for regional elites to
challenge the national party. As centrifugal representation situates geography at
the center of the political stage, the constraints imposed by regional inequalities
on institutional changes grow stronger. At the extreme, the electoral constraints
emerging from the geography of inequality dominate the strategy of regional
political leaders. Politics becomes a conflict about the distribution of resources
among jurisdictions, and territorial interests (preferences over the value of T)
outweigh class interests (intraregional contentions over the value of t).
As regional incomes diverge ( w A
=
0;low
μ
w B
w c
), the distance between the
optimal preferences of different regions increases (in terms of the model
r ϕ n )
=
=
...
tends to 1), thereby reducing the incentives of regional elites to accept
any fiscal structure other than the one that maximizes their electoral survival.
The analysis above suggests that any deviation from the ideal fiscal structure
of the region's median voter brings about a disutility for the regional party
leader. 14 Through this mechanism the diversity of preferences, determined by
14 Assuming a standard democratic setup in which two parties compete for a majority of the voters
within the district, and given the structure of this model, the probability of gaining and retaining
office becomes a function of how closely the platforms offered by either party j approaches the
ideal institutional configuration of the pivotal group of voters within the district. In accordance
with previous contributions (Beramendi 2007 ; Bolton and Roland 1997 ;Cremer and Palfrey
1999 ) it is straightforward to see that such a position corresponds to the median voter within
the district. As a result, the preferences of the median voter within each district become the
criteria according to which regional elites will evaluate alternative institutional designs.
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