Subnational State Research Articles

“Movilizados” de Malvinas en Chaco y Corrientes. Las luchas por reconocimiento en clave comparativa.

En este artículo analizo dos casos provinciales –en Chaco y Corrientes- de luchas de colectivos de ex soldados movilizados para ser reconocidos por las legislaciones locales como veteranos de la guerra de Malvinas. Propongo abordar en clave comparativa los procesos de presentaciones de proyectos de ley para pensiones y reconocimiento histórico y moral que estuvieron acompañados por acciones de protesta en el espacio público entre 2006 y 2011. Divido el análisis en tres dimensiones (identitaria, estratégica-legal y estratégica-política) atendiendo a la relación entre Estado subnacional, movimientos sociales intervinientes y el problema del reconocimiento. Concluyo dando cuenta que la veteranía de los movilizados lejos está de resolverse y que los grados de reconocimiento estatal locales dependen de la complejidad de la red de relaciones políticas involucradas en cada caso.

Understanding city-regionalism in China: regional cooperation in the Yangtze River Delta

ABSTRACTUnderstanding city-regionalism in China: regional cooperation in the Yangtze River Delta. Regional Studies. China has witnessed the orchestration of city-regionalism and two different regional-scale mechanisms have influenced this integration and cooperation: the top-down state-mandated process and the bottom-up process initiated by local governments. However, this has not been a smooth process and it is shaped by the internal politics generated by China’s state configurations. Using the Yangtze River Delta as a case study, this paper argues that China’s territorial administrative divisions are a historical configuration that is essential to understand the efforts to construct city-regions as well as to understand the failure to create a new sub-national state space.

Forced Silence: Determinants of Journalist Killings in Mexico's States, 2010–2015

AbstractWhy are some subnational states more dangerous for journalists? This exploratory article assesses the association of social variables with the murders of journalists within one single country, Mexico, where forty-one journalists were killed from 2010 to 2015. The article suggests that the violent deaths of journalists in Mexico's thirty-two states are more likely to happen in those subnational polities with high levels of social violence, internal conflict, severe violations of human rights, low democratic development, and economic inequality. The implications of this research and policy recommendations are discussed within the conclusion.

Forced Silence: Determinants of Journalist Killings in Mexico's States, 2010–2015

AbstractWhy are some subnational states more dangerous for journalists? This exploratory article assesses the association of social variables with the murders of journalists within one single country, Mexico, where forty-one journalists were killed from 2010 to 2015. The article suggests that the violent deaths of journalists in Mexico's thirty-two states are more likely to happen in those subnational polities with high levels of social violence, internal conflict, severe violations of human rights, low democratic development, and economic inequality. The implications of this research and policy recommendations are discussed within the conclusion.

Introduction to the Special Issue: Papers from 2016 Workshops: Parallel Policy Issues: Freedom of Information and Cybersecurity

Introduction to the Special Issue: Papers from 2016 Workshops: Parallel Policy Issues: Freedom of Information and Cybersecurity

State restructuring and emerging patterns of subnational policy-making and governance in China and India

Engaging with theory and comparative research, the specific aim of this special issue is to contribute to scholarship engaging with state rescaling theory in non-Western societies as well as to on-going debates about the changing scalar dimensions of urban and regional development. It does so by examining scalar dynamics on the basis of empirical case studies in China and India, including fieldwork-based research. The starting point of the papers is the observation that subnational states assume distinctly more significant roles than in the past for regulating economic activities and shaping economic governance. Processes of state restructuring currently underway in each country are reconfiguring the spatial deployment of the state, or state territoriality, a development that has attracted considerably less academic attention than changing state-market relations. This introductory article sets out the special issue's theoretical and empirical objectives. It provides a review of existing literature, analysing the various modalities of scalar restructuring and situating them in relation to each national context. In particular, ‘rescaling’ and ‘decentralisation’ processes are carefully distinguished, in order to sharpen the focus of the debate and facilitate comparison between the Chinese and Indian cases. Finally, the specific aspects of state restructuring analysed in this set of papers are discussed with regard to the literature, to underscore their contribution. The papers cover a range of policy domains and instruments pertaining to both economic development and social welfare. Using scale-sensitive methods, they map changing geographies of both state space and socio-economic relations and discuss them in relation to each country's unique development trajectory.

The dilemma of autonomy: decentralization and water politics at the subnational level

ABSTRACTThis article develops a framework for understanding the role of subnational states in water politics in decentralized federal systems. First, that role has increased worldwide as a result of decentralization. Second, the quest for autonomy sometimes leads subnational officials to prefer weak forms of cooperation. Third, the interaction of subnational states, central governments and non-governmental actors largely explains interjurisdictional conflict and cooperation in shared river basins. This framework is applied to the case of the Colorado River basin to help explain a long-term shift towards more cooperative relationships between the riparian states.

Expanding Influences Research to Insecure Democracies

Democracies with sharp violence and public insecurity have proliferated in recent decades, with many also featuring extreme economic inequality. These conditions have not been explicitly considered in comparative research on journalists’ work environments, an omission that may obscure important realities of contemporary journalism. We address this gap through analysis of journalist surveys in 62 countries. We confirm the existence of insecure democracies as an empirical phenomenon and begin to unravel their meaning for journalists. We find democracies with uneven democratic performance tend to have more journalist assassinations, which is the most extreme form of influence on work, and that levels of democratic performance, violence, public insecurity and economic inequality significantly shape how journalists perceive various influences in their work environment. Case studies of insecure democracies in Africa and Latin America address why these conditions sometimes (but not always) lead to journalist assassinations and other anti-press violence. They suggest anti-press violence is higher when sub-national state actors intensify criminal violence and when insecurity is geographically and topically proximate to journalists. How journalists’ perceive influences on work are therefore more complex and multidimensional than previous research has suggested. The study concludes by identifying areas for improvement in data collection.

Continuity and change in Indian fiscal federalism

ABSTRACTThis article focuses on whether the discontinuity in the structure of the Indian economy, which started with the economic reforms of 1991, triggered changes in federal fiscal arrangements. This examination is embedded in a larger overview of the basic fiscal structure, characterized by annual flows from the national government (the “Center”) to subnational states that have both statutory (guaranteed and formulaic) and non-statutory (discretionary) components. An unforeseen consequence of trade liberalization was the loss of trade tax revenue, which drove down tax collections at the Center both as a percent of GDP, and relative to states. Four major policy changes initiated after 1991 are attributable to post-reform concerns with efficiency in the fiscal structure. The final shift of indirect taxation to a fully value added configuration, with comprehensive coverage of goods and services, is scheduled for introduction by September 16, 2017.

The Ideological Struggle of Multicultural Nationalism: Cultural Identity in the 2014 Malaysian Top-Grossing MovieThe Journey

This study attempts to discover how multiculturalism interacts with sub-state nationalism as portrayed in the Malaysian top-grossing film of 2014 – The Journey directed by Chiu Keng Guan. The nature of Malaysian society and its colonial history might suggest that cultural interaction among its three major races (Malays, Chinese, and Indians) is a norm, but this study argues that the culture of these three major races as portrayed in the fictional film is made up of “systems of representations”; such systems of representations do not reflect the intentions of the subjects, but rather, actively construct meanings as conditions and instruments, signifying practice in reality. The application of in-depth interviews (e.g., the film director and the screenplay writer) discovered cultural identity depicted in the film as always having a specific ‘positionality’ within their representation, and the ideological struggle of multicultural nationalism embedded in the film is considered ‘nonsubjective’. The authors believe that every culture is local, but no culture is autochthonous, and cultural identity illustrated in the film can be regarded as ‘uniqueness of the soil’.

Federalism and the Creation of Sub-national States in Nigeria: Appraising the State-Creation Exercise under Babangida Administration

Federalism and the Creation of Sub-national States in Nigeria: Appraising the State-Creation Exercise under Babangida Administration

Bringing the Local State Back into Development: The Local Developmental Statee and the Promotion of Sustainable Economic Development and Growth from the Bottom-Up

After having banned all discussion of the ‘developmental state’ concept during the high period of global neoliberalism (1980-2008), the Great Recession that began in 2008 forced the international development community to begin to urgently reassess the concept in order to deal with the mounting economic, social and political crises (see Crespi, Fernandez-Arias and Stein 2014; Salazar-Xirinachs, Nubler and Kozul-Wright, 2014; UNCTAD, 2016a). Most attention in this revival of interest in the developmental state has followed the line that began with Johnson’s (1982) pioneering work on Japan, through to the seminal work on South Korea by Amsden (1989) and Chang (1994) and on Taiwan by Wade (1990), which is to say that it has overwhelmingly emphasized the role of (suitably redesigned) national-level developmental state institutions. This approach is misleading, however, because a great part of the historic success attributed to the ‘developmental state’ model was actually brought about thanks to the intervention of sub-national state institutions – that is, thanks to what we now call the ‘local developmental state’ (Bateman 2000, 2001, 2005, 2010: 166-2010, 2015, 2016; Bateman and Chang, 2012; UNCTAD, 2016b: 117-119). This revised understanding highlights the ‘bottom-up’ institutional push provided for structural transformation and industrial development imparted by sub-national governments. Important examples of such ‘local developmental state’-type pro-activity include experiences from post-war West Germany, northern Italy, the Basque country of Spain and Japan, followed by many East Asian states from the 1950s onwards (Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam), and also by several Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico). Finally there is China, which provides perhaps the most impressive example of the ‘local developmental state’ in action (see Thun, 2006: Ou, 2013), and might even constitute a ‘Beijing/Shanghai consensus’ model to replace the failed ‘top-down’ market-driven ‘Washington consensus’ neoliberal model of development. This paper assesses the historical experience, core capabilities and potential transferability of the local developmental state model. In the context of the ongoing intellectual and material collapse of the global neoliberal model, but especially in view of the failure of low productivity market-driven individual entrepreneurship and self-employment projects to act as the source of value and development progress (Bateman, 2010; Nightingale and Coad, 2014; Naude, 2016), the argument is made that the local developmental state model should become a key foundation of local-level policy efforts and the judicious promotion of the ‘right type’ of high productivity enterprise development projects, in both the developed and developing countries, required to bring about a sustainable and equitable development trajectory ‘from the bottom-up’.

State spatial restructuring, subnational politics and emerging spaces of engagement for collective action: Labour regimes in Tamil Nadu, southern India

This paper contributes to the emerging literature on state rescaling by examining how processes of restructuring in late transitioning countries like India shape spaces of collective action for labour. India’s subnational States, which have become increasingly critical scales for shaping processes of economic restructuring, face competing governance imperatives. On one hand, they must offer a business-friendly environment, including cheap labour, in order to attract private investments. On the other hand, in a democratic polity, they are compelled to secure political power through electoral appeal to labour. Through a study of labour regimes in the southern State of Tamil Nadu, I argue that subnational governments have responded to this challenge by enabling a scale of labour governance that undermines labour’s ability to engage with new spaces of collective action opened up by reforms and globalization. Rather, the State subsidizes labour through welfare provisioning in their residential spaces even as it draws upon inter-State migrant labour that wields less electoral power.

Business and labor market flexibility in India: the importance of caste

Since the enactment of economic liberalization in India in the early 1990s, variation in investment climate and labor market reforms across sub-national states has been linked to the increasing relevance of business in policy making. This article argues that the influence of business on policy is conditioned by wider political dynamics. We argue that the reform orientation of states correspond to the position of business classes and caste-based groups within the support base of political parties. We show that caste identification plays an important role on the position of political parties towards business liberalization policies. Thus, we conclude that the relative power of business across the states appears to vary due to the relation between business and government, which in turn is structured by the salience of business castes as an electorally relevant group.

Land acquisition, rural protests, and the local state in China and India

As China and India urbanize, land acquisition by state and private actors has become highly contentious in both countries. This article compares two large-scale anti-land acquisition protests—the Wukan protest in China’s Guangdong province and the Singur protest in the Indian state of West Bengal—to examine how the subnational state partakes in land acquisition and how rural protesters engage with different levels of the state in their resistance. The comparative analysis finds that the different involvement of the subnational state in land speculation has produced different spatiality and dynamics of protests. In China, rural protesters target the bottom-level authority such as village councils, often taking on a cellular form of mobilization geographically confined to their particular villages. By comparison, in India rural protesters target the regional state governments and they engage in associational forms of mobilization by building ad hoc alliances with political parties and NGOs beyond the affected villages. Although the larger context of political regimes should be taken into account, this article shows that the scales at which the subnational state partakes in land acquisition have largely shaped the spatiality and strategies of rural protests.

State, scale and networks in the liberalisation of India’s land

As states concentrate their developmental capacities in space, the sub-national scale has emerged as a focal point of policy-making in India. The rescaled spatiality of the state is being inscribed on land. Land is the primary resource available to sub-national states to attract private investment in post-reform contexts. Yet, the promulgation of innovative policies is only the start of the space-state relationship. This paper follows rescaled state policy through to its reception and appropriation by business, community and family networks that operate in the real estate industry, which is a major land user. Dynamic multi-dimensional spatial relations involving scales and networks do not engage with a staid, centralised, formal state. Instead, real estate firms work with a state that is itself networked, and that straddles formality and informality, as well as shadows. India’s land economy is animated in this teeming space of state, scale and networks.

US-proofing the Paris Climate Agreement

What can be done if a future US President withdraws from the Paris Climate Agreement? This is a critical question for an agreement which relies on universal participation for legitimacy. The US can and likely will ratify the Paris Agreement via a presidential-executive agreement. However, this could be easily reversed by a future President or an antagonistic Congress. A non-party US operating outside of the Paris climate architecture is a real threat, especially given Republican opposition to international climate policy. This article explores both what tools are available for addressing a non-party US in any climate agreement and what the Paris Agreement in particular can do. The Paris Agreement is extremely vulnerable to the withdrawal of the US, or any other major party. It possesses no non-party measures, although it can be amended to help avoid this Achilles heel. Through amendments to Article 6 a market link between subnational states in a renegade US and international carbon markets could be created. Ideally, a more semi-global approach with punitive carbon border tax adjustments could be taken to help US-proof an alternative climate agreement. The Paris Agreement will be fatally susceptible to a US dropout unless amendments to the treaty are made. Relying on the good will of a single president is short-sighted. Longer-term climate governance needs to take seriously the threat of non-parties, particularly if they are superpowers.Policy relevanceThis article explores how to craft an effective climate treaty without US ratification, including through reforms to the Paris Agreement. While the US is likely to be able to be able legally adopt the Paris Agreement through a presidential-executive agreement there is a distinct possibility of the US withdrawing and repealing such an agreement due to a change in president. This article suggests that the Paris Agreement is vulnerable to such an occurrence and thus the insights of this research are both timely and relevant to delegations and others involved with the UNFCCC. It will be of use to domestic US actors, as well as international negotiators and scholars in dealing with a non-party US and non-parties in general.

Sovereignty in a Changing World: From Westphalia to Food Sovereignty

This article traces the shifting meaning of the notion of sovereignty from the modern age to the age of globalization and its aftermath, envisaging new constellations of sovereignty taking shape across the globe. Observing the term's centrality in the configuration of the modern nation-state and its epochal semantic shifts, it briefly examines the concept's ‘decline’ during the era of globalization. It then introduces the notion of ‘liquid sovereignty’ in the context of rapidly changing ideas of territoriality, power, and inter-dependence. This in turn, it is argued, is connected with the surfacing of new forms of sovereignty centred on aliments, nutrition, and survival, encapsulated in the notion of ‘food sovereignty’. The article suggests that the food sovereignty movement has helped in the recovery of basic aspects of sovereignty in a world threatened by climate change and neo-liberal globalization, as the cosmopolitical dimension merged with ethno-political claims, particularly amongst Indigenous Peoples in the Americas and, to a lesser extent, Western sub-state nationalist movements.

Social Capital and Performance of Fiscal Institution in India During 1991-2012

This paper examines the relationship between social capital and performance of fiscal institutions using provincial sub-national state level data in India during 1991-2012. Institution in India is significant and controls fiscal performances as per social need for economic development. People participation in public affairs or simply vote turnover in general election in India is taken to measure the social trust on fiscal institution. Fiscal performance in India is based on social capital. As one percent vote turnover rate rises fiscal deficit reduces by 2.6 to 2.8 percent. Empirical findings suggest that social capital indirectly control the fiscal performance of the elected government. The results are robust to a number of control variables. The strong political trust is established through high turnover rate and vote share in the election for formation of government that create the platform for sound fiscal policy decisions

Does devolution crowd out development? A spatial analysis of US local government fiscal effort

Devolution to the subnational state and local level has increased reliance on locally raised revenue to provide basic social, infrastructural, and economic development services. We conduct multilevel regression models of local government fiscal effort (locally raised revenue normalized by population and income) of all county areas in the continental United States for the period 2002–2007. Spatial regression and geographically weighted regression are used to understand differential spatial effects of subnational state policies on local fiscal effort across counties. In contrast to conventional fiscal federalism theory, which argues local government is the developmental state, we find increased spatial inequality as expenditures driven by local need may crowd out expenditures related to growth and development. Nonmetropolitan counties and older suburbs exhibit higher local effort, while suburban outlying areas have lower effort. State rescaling requires more attention to policies of the subnational state, particularly state aid and state centralization of fiscal responsibility to ensure that both redistributive and developmental expenditures can be maintained under devolution.