| Political bargaining in federations and quasi-federations is viewed through the federative lens by some, through the partisan lens by others, and more recently through the integrated incentives stemming from both. These discussions, for the most part, are theory-biased, as unraveling empirically federative from partisan dynamics has proven difficult. Drawing on the increasing comparative examples of asymmetric autonomy recognition, this dissertation proposes an approach for estimating separable institutional effects on these two primary types of political competitiveness. To that end, the first paper provides a theoretical account of the role of asymmetries, trying to unravel the conditions under which this second dimension of competition manifests in fiscal bargaining. The second paper tests empirically the implications of these arguments on the way state-wide parties design their policy positions on a territorial second dimension of competition. Finally, an empirical exercise is offered in the third paper to study the extent to which citizens perceive and assess their surrounding objective conditions depending on regional level institutional design variation and cleavage based mobilization. Variation in the institutional design of federations and quasi-federations, I conclude, is an important factor to take into account in federal political economy, as well as in the more general political science research in the field. |
