Subnational State Research Articles

Political and Legal Disarrays of Separation of Powers in the Oromia Regional State Structure

In principle, a functional division of powers is a prerequisite for limited government. Oromia Regional State, the largest sub-national state in the Ethiopian federation, can exercise upward influence if it develops a limited government with a strong separation of power within its borders. The purpose of this paper is to make an effort to look into the political and legal difficulties that threatened separation of power among the major participants in the region's power dispersion structure. In order to achieve this, the study employed interviews with a few specifically chosen experts and officials from the three arms of regional government, as well as a pertinent literature analysis and personal observation. This led to the discovery that several political and legal constraints significantly restrict the power structure in the region. Ultimately, it was proposed that in order for the region to ensure genuine separation of powers, political players would need to work together to create a political culture that supports constitutionalism and maintain their commitment to the rule of law.

Follow-up Performance assessment of a Social Health Insurance Scheme in a southwest Nigeria state

Aims: Social health insurance and other forms of prepayment health schemes are effective approaches to enhancing access to available healthcare services. While prepayment schemes are generally common and well established in developed countries, they are relatively new and in the early stages of development in sub-Saharan countries, including Nigeria. Social health insurance in Nigeria, hitherto centralized, has devolved to the subnational state levels. The Oyo State Health Insurance Scheme, which is managed by the Oyo State Health Insurance Agency (OYSHIA), is one of the subnational schemes. The present study is a follow-up on the first three-year performance assessment of OYSHIA. The aim is also to assess the performance of the scheme and, most importantly, whether the recommendations made in the first study were used and if these recommendations have had a desirable impact on the scheme. Methods: Secondary data on enrolment in the social health insurance scheme of Oyo State between July 2020 and June 2023 were downloaded from the server of OYSHIA. The data were collated and analyzed. Data extraction, cleaning, and analysis covered a period of one and a half months (February–AApril, 2024). Excel software was used to analyze the data. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize the data. Population coverage distributions were expressed as frequencies and percentages. Frequency tables and graphs were generated to disaggregate the findings. Results: Although population coverage was still generally low, as it was in the first three-year performance assessment of the scheme, However, the present study shows that population coverage in the informal sector is very encouraging. Conclusions: In the absence of external limitations, the Oyo State social health insurance scheme has the potential to perform and achieve universal health coverage. Acknowledgements: The authors wish to acknowledge the Oyo State Health Insurance Agency for their permission to make use of the data and to submit the manuscript for publication. All enrollees are also appreciated. Contributions: David Adewole conceived and designed the study. Sola Akande, Boluwatito Orimadegun, and Ganiyu Owolabi were responsible for the data collection and analysis. Adewole, Akande, Orimadegun, Osungbade, and Owolabi contributed equally to the manuscript write-up. All authors read through the manuscript draft a second time. All authors agreed to the final manuscript.

Perceived needs of disease vector control programs: A review and synthesis of (sub)national assessments from South Asia and the Middle East.

Systems for disease vector control should be effective, efficient, and flexible to be able to tackle contemporary challenges and threats in the control and elimination of vector-borne diseases. As a priority activity towards the strengthening of vector control systems, it has been advocated that countries conduct a vector-control needs assessment. A review was carried out of the perceived needs for disease vector control programs among eleven countries and subnational states in South Asia and the Middle East. In each country or state, independent teams conducted vector control needs assessment with engagement of stakeholders. Important weaknesses were described for malaria, dengue and leishmaniases regarding vector surveillance, insecticide susceptibility testing, monitoring and evaluation of operations, entomological capacity and laboratory infrastructure. In addition, community mobilization and intersectoral collaboration showed important gaps. Countries and states expressed concern about insecticide resistance that could reduce the continued effectiveness of interventions, which demands improved monitoring. Moreover, attainment of disease elimination necessitates enhanced vector surveillance. Vector control needs assessment provided a useful planning tool for systematic strengthening of vector control systems. A limitation in conducting the vector control needs assessment was that it is time- and resource-intensive. To increase the feasibility and utility of national assessments, an abridged version of the guidance should focus on operationally relevant topics of the assessment. Similar reviews are needed in other regions with different contextual conditions.

Beyond Secession: Substate Nationalism and Support for Redistribution in Spain

This article explores how and why substate nationalism shapes support for redistribution. An experiment embedded in an original survey reveals that in Spanish regions with extensive substate nationalist mobilization, preferences for redistribution vary based on the proposed boundaries of redistribution. In this context, individuals have preferences regarding where redistribution will occur, and not just on how much there will be. The results provide the first micro-level evidence for how preferences for redistribution depend on the geographic boundaries of a proposed policy and why mobilized group identities interact with those preferences to determine support for redistribution. The findings suggest that substate nationalist mobilization has significant implications for policy preferences beyond secession.

Secession, Right to Decide and the Constitutional Model of Militant Democracy

Advocating democracy and the right to decide over forceful union in the Spanish and European contexts, this paper makes modest theoretical proposals to protect the right to decide and to self-government of sub-state nations or peoples. The peaceful solution of conflicts involving contested claims over territory and national sovereignty calls for a pluralist concept of democracy, recovering the centrality of self-determination as the self-assertion of a people, a political community that has been systematically denied the freedom to decide on its own political status and aspiration. Constitutional law based on popular sovereignty often neglects the question of the definition of the demos as the prefigured and axiomatic constituency. If the Constitution is further interpreted as precluding any claim to self-determination by a constituency, and any debate about that claim then an undemocratic model of militant constitutionalism ensues. That militant scheme is not so much about protecting democracy as it is about imposing a national model, a pre-defined demos. This contribution seeks to revisit the claim of sovereignty of the Catalan process and the constitutional doctrine of the Spanish judiciary precluding the Catalan Parliament from engaging in political debates on the right to decide, in relation to the issue of the militant democracy model

Political economy of sub-national fragility and armed conflict in Northwest Nigeria

ABSTRACT Insecurity in Nigeria’s Northwest region is fast deteriorating due to armed conflict emanating from the activities of jihadist terrorist groups, armed bandits, and other organised criminal gangs. This has claimed the lives of thousands, and displaced many others, resulting in a humanitarian crisis. While previous studies have highlighted the triggers and drivers of armed conflict in fragile states such as poverty, inequality, unemployment, poor governance, weak institutions, and climate change to mention a few, as well as the important role of the nation-state in providing safety and security for its citizens, little attention has been given to the relationship between sub-national fragility and armed conflict. This research draws attention to the less obvious ‘hidden enablers’ of armed conflict within the context of sub-national fragility, and how it inhibits their institutional capacities to guarantee the social welfare and security of their citizens. The absence of which contributes to the deteriorating insecurity situation in Nigeria’s troubled Northwest region. These include the debt crisis and declining internally generated revenue affecting the sub-national states. The research therefore advances the argument on sub-national fragility, by examining how it contributes to manifestations of armed conflict, and its implications for peace and security in Nigeria’s Northwest region.

India’s Democracy: The Competitive Authoritarian Propensity? Rahul Mukherji and Seyed Hossein Zarhani

This paper explains and corroborates the mechanisms by which civic and political spaces opposed to Hindu nationalism have been attacked, especially after the arrival of the right-wing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in 2014. Three mechanisms are discerned for replacing pluralistic values with Hindu majoritarian ones. Sometimes institutions are just allowed to drift by interpreting old rules in new ways. For example, no formal rules for media control have changed but the government???s control over media has increased substantially. At other times, incremental legal and policy changes are executed to make the change explicit, often building on a new moral purpose. To give another example, the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) was amended and weaponized against NGOs in a layered way in 2020. Finally, when political opposition is weak, institutions that have provided guarantees for protecting diversity have simply been displaced by new and radically different ones. This was the case with abrogating Article 370, which converted the special status of the subnational state of Jammu and Kashmir to the status of two federally administered union territories–Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. These mechanisms place India in a competitive authoritarian frame, where those in power deploy electoral majorities to systematically attack the political opposition, making it more di(cult for it to rise. Despite these propensities, opposition parties have won elections in some of India’s subnational states. The challenges facing the world’s most populous democracy are significant, even though competitive elements co-exist. These elements in a competitive authoritarian regime, however, are under severe stress. India’s democratic credentials can be revived only if the competitive elements of India’s democracy stand united against ethno-nationalist Hindu majoritarianism.

Blame‐avoidance and fragmented crisis management during the COVID‐19 pandemic in Switzerland

AbstractThis article studies how the prolonged pandemic situation impacted crisis governance in the federalized governance system of Switzerland. It examines how in this acute crisis situation, the responsibility for decision‐making fluctuated among governance levels, placing subnational states in a situation of uncertainty that caused a fragmented crisis management, and therefore suboptimal policy learning processes. The study is based on the case of COVID‐19 governance in Switzerland, where, as in many other European countries, the management of the first pandemic wave was very centralized. However, the federal government avoided taking a strong lead during the subsequent waves. Consequently, pandemic management was marked by numerous fluctuations regarding who was in charge of the main COVID‐19 decisions between the federal and subnational governance levels. A media analysis (February 2020–March 2022) and an analysis of the gray literature show that crisis governance and policy learning processes were scattered across levels of governance, which impeded the accumulation of knowledge and know‐how. The article analyses how crises can give way to blame games between the levels of governance, thus hampering a coordinated crisis management and policy learning processes across the different stages of the pandemic.

Pathways to develop state capacity in a weak state: the sub-national state of Bihar in India

ABSTRACT This article aims to unravel how a weak state develops state capacity – an aspect hitherto ignored in mainstream literature. This is a study of a sub-national case of Bihar in India. Historically, Bihar is considered a weak state, lacking state capacity. Yet, improvements have occurred in recent decades. By profiling two areas of improved outcomes: infrastructure (roads and bridges) and welfare (distribution of bicycles to school-going girls), the article argues that the improvements are the outcome of the political and bureaucratic elite’s ideas and political will. The case of Bihar shows that the rationalities within a state depend on social learning, puzzling, and powering, having a powerful impact on policy paradigms even in weak states.

Autonomy Over Independence: Self-Determination in Catalonia, Flanders and South Tyrol in the Aftermath of the Great War.

The end of the First World War was a crucial time for nationalist leaders and minority communities across the European continent and beyond. The impact of the post-war spread of self-determination on the redrawing of Eastern European borders and on the claims of colonial independence movements has been extensively researched. By contrast, the international historiography has paid little attention to minority nationalist movements in Western Europe. This article focuses on three regions (Catalonia, Flanders and South Tyrol) that experienced considerable sub-state national mobilization in the interwar period. We aim to understand whether the leaders of Western European minorities and stateless nations shared the same enthusiasm as their anti-colonial and Eastern European counterparts for the new international order that self-determination seemed to foreshadow in the months following the end of the First World War. Because the American President Woodrow Wilson stood out as the most prominent purveyor of the new international legitimacy of self-determination, the article further examines how Western European nationalist movements exploited Wilson's image and advocacy to achieve their own goals. Nationalist forces in Catalonia, Flanders and South Tyrol initially mobilized self-determination and referred to Wilson as a symbol of national liberation, but this instrumentalization of self-determination was not sustained. Large-scale mobilization occurred only in Catalonia, and, even there, it disappeared suddenly in spring 1919. Furthermore, sub-state nationalist movements in Western Europe tended to mobilize self-determination to gain regional autonomy, rather than full independence, thus pursuing internal, not external, self-determination. The willingness of these movements to privilege autonomy over full independence made them more receptive to compromise. Radical forces would become stronger only in the 1930s and largely for reasons not directly connected to the post-war mobilization around self-determination.

Post-conflict statecraft, land governance and exclusion in Hargeisa, Somaliland

This paper explores urban land governance in Hargeisa as a critical site of Somaliland’s post-conflict statecraft. Two key issues make this study imperative. First, the current research on Somaliland focuses on the central authority( 1 ) with scant attention to the organization and functioning of the urban state and its effect for the urban poor, thus obscuring the importance of the conurbation as a site for statecraft. Second, Somaliland’s post-conflict statecraft is marked by inconsistencies, previously unexplored. While the creation of the subnational state is characterized as bottom-up, with its origins in community-led peacebuilding, its governance practices are characterized by exclusionary top-down procedures imported from colonial and postcolonial periods. Based on interviews with key informants, archival research and document analysis, I historicize these layers of the state-building processes. I argue that the top-down approach of post-conflict land governance, a critical site of statecraft, marginalizes the disadvantaged by creating bureaucracies that favour the affluent.

The travelogue cooking show in a sub-state nation: Representing Scotland in British food television

Food television offers a new and unique lens on national identity, the Anglo-Scottish relationship, and their cultural representation in contemporary Britain. This article is based on the analysis of three British travelogue cooking shows, first broadcast between 1995 and 2011, about Scotland and its food. The programmes analysed exemplify and reinforce long-standing cultural constructions of the relationship between England and Scotland as sub-state nations of the United Kingdom, as well as illustrating and creating new national scripts, notably in relation to class and gender. These ‘homeland’ travelogue cooking shows consistently associate Scotland with a defined set of local and traditional foods, closely associated with a Romantic construction of Scotland, its history and landscape. However, the programmes also indicate wider changes in British and Scottish food culture during this period, including the rise of the local food movement and the increasing economic success and cultural confidence of the Scottish food and drink industry. The article highlights the role of celebrity chefs in the cultural construction of contemporary British sub-state national relationships.

Rural Energy Transition for Cooking in India—Revisiting the Drivers

The recent analysis from IEA (International Energy Agency) on energy transition in India highlights that cooking continues to be the weakest link in the energy transition process for rural households and that rural energy transition of households to cleaner fuel is nonlinear in nature. Several programs have been designed to plague the voids and address this nonlinearity, but the transition to cleaner alternatives for cooking did not happen in the pace it should ideally have. Therefore, an empirical exercise was carried out at a national level to revisit the disconnect between the income growth and energy transition and identify the drivers of the energy transition process in cooking at the national as well as at the subnational state level for a developing country. The paper adds to the current scholarship on drivers of household energy transition by analyzing the relationship between household energy choices and non-income determinants and proves the nonlinearity in energy consumption of rural households of Bihar. Analyzing unit level record from National Sample Survey, an empirical exercise was carried out by using multinomial logit model to identify the potential determining factors at the individual household and group level. The group effect analysis through fixed and random effect has been conducted purposely to understand if social and cultural norms or community level factors within a village society have any effect on the cooking energy transition of rural households and if that offsets the effect of household income in energy transition for cooking. Furthermore, to statistically examine the perceived non-linearity in the consumption of cooking fuel such as firewood by rural households, Brock–Dechert–Scheinkman (BDS) test was conducted for rural households of 38 districts of Bihar. The analysis helps in inferring that subsidy on modern fuel and/or other cooking alternatives alone may not suffice to drive the transition process, but more targeted intervention rooted in the local cultural context in consonance with social and cultural norms or community level factors could be more effective for sustained rural energy transition.

Greening self-government? Incorporation of environmental justifications into sub-state nationalist claim making in Spain

Regional nationalism in Spain – particularly those movements in Catalonia and the Basque Country – have been characterized at the parliamentary level by political parties from both the traditional left and right of the political spectrum. While calls for greater autonomy and even secession are made from both ends of that spectrum, the framings of their calls for self-government vary in content and scope. Since the turn into the 21st century, sub-state nationalist parties of the left - those more typically associated with a prioritization of environmental concerns - in both regions have taken an increased share of the seats in their respective parliaments. Over the same period, climate change has increasingly moved to the front of the list of the concerns of European citizens. This paper investigates the degree to which key regional nationalists of the left have moved to incorporate environmental and climate change concerns into their claim making, narrative, and framings, highlighting both regional, and governance level comparative dynamics.

Nationalism, Regionalism, and Strategic Learning in Federal Systems: Drawing on the Quebec Model in Alberta

ABSTRACT Territorial and intergovernmental tensions are particularly strong in multinational federations like Canada. In this article, we study how Quebec has become an explicit model for Alberta in its own quest for greater autonomy and influence within the Canadian federation. After discussing the notion of strategic learning as it relates to different types of territorial politics (substate nationalism, regionalism, and jurisdictionalism), the article explores three instances of explicit political borrowing from Quebec in contemporary Alberta politics: 1) public statements by provincial leaders advocating increased provincial autonomy; 2) the use of a referendum as a tool to put pressure on the federal government to adopt positions and policies friendly to the Alberta government, as occurred in 2021 with the consultation on equalization; and 3) the development of an Alberta-centered federal party with a secessionist position to bolster the influence of the province in federal politics, as occurred with the Maverick Party.

Post-apartheid state business relations in Johannesburg: a sub-national perspective on the 21st Century developmental state

ABSTRACT This article discusses prospects for the building of a developmental state in South Africa by examining relations between the local state and business. Its main aim is to assess how far the country has come in creating a state with healthy state business relations typical of successful developmental states. Using the case study method with information sourced through interviews and a review of key documents, the study utilises the democratic developmental state theoretical model that advocates the state’s extensive engagement with all actors. The model also recognises the role of subnational government. Informed by this model, it places particular focus on relations between the state and business in the city of Johannesburg since 2000 until 2016. It finds the association between the local state and business to traverse two worlds. In the one world, the city is a developmental subnational state relating well with business and building partnerships to address challenges. In another, there is compromised autonomy of the city’s administration and its collective development goals. Benefits are not widespread and there is no prevalent sense of collective developmental solidarity, casting doubt on South Africa’s progress towards building a developmental state.

A transnational social contract: Social protection policies toward Non-Resident Keralites

Abstract The migration process raises a set of migration-related risks and vulnerabilities, yet recognizing these as collective problems is paramount to formulating public policy responses. As one of the first subnational states globally, the South Indian state Kerala has institutionalized various social protection policies toward emigrants and returned migrants under the department of Non-Resident Keralites’ Affairs (NORKA) and its implementation agency NORKA ROOTS. Taking the case of Kerala, this article investigates why subnational states recognize their international emigrants and return migrants as deserving of social protection provisions. Subnational states matter as they are sites of diaspora identification, and it is where migration’s consequences, such as emigrants’ philanthropic development projects and the reintegration of returned migrants, unfold. At the same time, they have less legislative and infrastructural power than federal states in engaging with emigrants and destination countries. By drawing on original data, the article argues that (returned) emigrants’ access to social protection schemes is built on understandings of deservingness based on a combination of protection rationales and economic rationales, rooted in Kerala’s specific developmental and identity discourse. The study demonstrates that despite subnational states having limited institutional capabilities compared with federal states, they are essential stakeholders in articulating transnational social protection policies.

Negotiated belonging in sub-state nationalist contexts: young adult migrant narratives in Scotland and South Tyrol

This contribution investigates the intersection between macro-level political narratives on diversity and micro-level lived experience of social inclusion and everyday interaction. The case studies for analysis comprise of two regional sub-state nationalist contexts, Scotland and South Tyrol, Italy. Scotland is a nation state that defines itself vis-a-vis the rest of the UK and where a discourse has emerged that Scottish nationalism is both civic and inclusive. South Tyrol is an autonomous province in northern Italy which remains a liminal space between Austria and Italy and is presented as a model to protect minorities. We argue for developing a critical stance on diversity narratives identified in these two-regions. Based on in-depth narrative interviews with young adult migrants, we use an ontological security framework to examine the relationship between macro-narratives and micro-level lived experiences of everyday social interactions. Firstly, we address how macro-level national identity discourses manifest themselves in micro-level everyday interactions. Secondly, we look at how young adults interpret these narratives when retelling their everyday experiences, sometimes to the point of excluding their own experiences of discrimination. In this way, we trace the negotiation of belongingness in these two contexts.

Between land and the market: farmers’ mobilizations in Chhattisgarh and western Uttar Pradesh

ABSTRACT In this article, I seek to understand the subnational variations in protests against land acqusition in India by comparing Chhattisgarh and western Uttar Pradesh (UP). Current scholarship explains these subnational variations through an analysis of subnational state policies of land acquisition. I suggest a people-centered approach that pays more attention to how the regional forms of mobilization have been shaped by the historical trajectories of engagement with the (colonial and postcolonial) state, market, and resistance movements. In Chhattisgarh, historical dispossessions and contemporary exclusions orchestrated by the state, the presence of strong civil society organizations to counter the state, and intergenerational memories of a rebellious tribal past resulted in the challenge to the market. State-driven agrarian development programs that created farmer entrepreneurs with urban longings, and a fear of loss of status resulted in the farmers’ demands for better compensation in UP. I suggest that complex and divergent historical processes might be at the root of why these mobilizations are predominantly subnational than national in scale.

Institutions and the politics of agency in COVID-19 response: Federalism, executive power, and public health policy in Brazil, India, and the U.S.

AbstractThe COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 was one of the rare events that shocked almost every world government simultaneously, thus creating an unusual opportunity to understand how political institutions shape policy decisions. There have been many analyses of what governments did. We focus instead on what they could do, focusing on the institutional politics of agency – how institutions empower rather than how they constrain, and how they affect public policy decisions. We examine public health measures in the first wave (March-September 2020) in Brazil, India, and the U.S. to understand how the interplay of institutions in a complex federal context shaped COVID-19 policy-responses. We find similar patterns of concentrated federal executive agency with limited constraints. In each case, when federal leadership failed public health policy responses, federated, subnational states were left to compensate for these inefficiencies without necessary resources.