The politics of proximity : local redistribution in developed democracies

Abstract

Over the last few decades, countries across the European Economic Area (EEA) have granted local governments considerable discretion over social policy. This project examines the consequences of these reforms. Drawing on unique data from over 28,000 European local governments, it demonstrates that decentralization has not been accompanied by declining levels of provision, as predicted by extant theories, but rather by significant expansion in the scale and scope of redistributive activity. Explaining this puzzle, the dissertation argues that local government behavior is shaped by the 'politics of proximity', which provides clear incentives for incumbents to invest in redistributive policy for electoral gain. These hypotheses are tested across five empirical chapters, each of which leverages micro-level data, natural experiments, and speech evidence to explore this emerging form of redistributive politics.