Local States and Public Goods Provision in the Age of Internal State Formation

• In Event: Political Science, Intergovernmental Relations, and Public Administration Mini-Conference: Politics and Public Administration in Comparative Federalism

Abstract

Despite growing attention to decentralization in comparative politics, and the near-universal presence of elected local governments in democracies, the role of local governance in wider patterns of state-society relations remains under-theorized and little understood. In this paper, we show how attention to local institutions offers new leverage for explaining variations in public goods provision in the early twentieth century that institutions and politics at the national level cannot account for.

Predominant accounts of state formation and state capacities during this era have generally focused on institutions at the national level, or in federal countries at the intermediate level, such as within U.S. states (Silberman, 1993; Skowronek, 1982). The measure of state capacity, or in Mann’s terminology infrastructural power (Mann, 1984), has been based on a top down account of both the sources of capacity for the state and on the development of institutions at the heights of the state. In contrast with these accounts, we develop a “bottom up” account of infrastructural power that focuses on the local state, defined as the complex of institutions for local government and territorial administration within cities and communities. Building on the arguments of Ziblatt (2006, 2008), the account emphasizes capacity to carry out policy within communities, and the means to enable local mobilization around support for public goods. Institutions for local government play a pivotal role both of these sources of local public goods provision.

The analysis treats both local government and local territorial administration as an analytically distinct local state that can incorporate civil society in qualitatively distinct ways. In one model, the local state comprised part of a system of hierarchical administration, and local civic opportunities to participate in governance at the community level remained constricted. In an alternative pathway, the local state depended on local civic actors to carry out public tasks, and developed in response to the demands of civic groups. A third pathway depended on both hierarchical administration and local civic participation. The first of these models was characteristic of Napoleonic Europe; the second, of the emerging democracies of the Anglo-American world and Switzerland, and the third, of Germany and Northern Europe. Spillovers in policy and administrative tasks at the local level itself compounded each of these models as new policies and public goods were developed.

Differences in the local state contributed to variations in the provision of local public goods in diverse domains. The most effective local states at providing these goods were the hybrid regimes (generally considered only partial democracies) that combined hierarchical administration with both stronger local government capacities and institutionalized local civic incorporation. Analysis of quantitative data from 21 countries on the distribution of infrastructure provision (gas, electricity, waterworks), urban planning, and primary education in the late 19th and early 20th centuries demonstrate these contrasts. Contrasts in economic development, urbanization, and national political regimes cannot explain them. Nor can the differences in religious composition and competition that Ansell and Lindvall (2013) highlight to account for variations in public education.


References
Ansell, B., & Lindvall, J. (2013). The Political Origins of Primary Education Systems. American Political Science Review, 107(3), 505-522.
Mann, M. (1984). The Autonomous Power of the State. European Journal of Sociology, 25(02), 185-213.
Silberman, B. S. (1993). Cages of Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Skowronek, S. (1982). Building a New American State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ziblatt, D. (2006). Structuring the state: the formation of Italy and Germany and the puzzle of federalism: Princeton University Press.
Ziblatt, D. (2008). Why Some Cities Provide More Public Goods than Others. Studies in Comparative International Development, 43(3-4), 273-289.

Authors

• Jefferey M. Sellers, University of Southern California

• Anders Lidstrom, Umea University

• Yooil Bae, Dong-A University