Theorising Decentralisation: Comparative Evidence from Sub-National Switzerland - Paperback

by Sean Mueller (Author)

This book seeks to explain centralisation and decentralisation across the 26 Swiss cantons using sociocultural, political-ideological, and macro-structural approaches. Centralisation and decentralisation are conceptionalised as having institutional (polity), functional (policy) and actor- and process-oriented dimensions. When decentralisation is first predicted cross-sectionally using linear regression models, three significant independent variables emerge: political culture, area, and the strength of leftwing parties. Then, using process tracing, Mueller studies four cantons over time to move from identifying correlation to establishing causation. Finally, the author draws causal inferences for (de)centralisation, urging future federal and territorial politics studies to reconceptualise decentralisation into three distinct but related dimensions and to bridge the theoretical gap between socio-cultural, structural and party-political approaches to achieve more valid and reliable explanations of territorial governance.

Author Biography

Sean Mueller is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the University of Berne, Switzerland, and editorial assistant of the Swiss Political Science Review. He obtained his PhD from the University of Kent in 2013. Before that, he was Research Fellow at the Institute of Federalism in Fribourg, Switzerland. Since 2011, he has co-convened the Swiss Political Science Association's standing group on Federalism & Territorial Politics and since 2013, he has been on the editorial board of Fédéralisme-Régionalisme. He co-edited Understanding Federalism & Federation (Ashgate, 2015) and has published in Publius, Government & Opposition, Electoral Studies, Space & Polity and L'Europe en Formation.