Identities and Attitudes to Decentralization in Multi-Level States: Understanding the Territorial Scales of Political Life

The process of decentralisation is both widespread and widely studied. Decentralisation includes efforts by central governments to devolve, deconcentrate and decentralise decision-making power and legislative authority to other, lower, territorial scales within the state (Hopkin and Van Houten 2009; Sorens 2009; Rodríguez-Pose and Krøijer 2009). This political shift towards decentralisation can often coincide with tensions over the multi-level governance structures that are in place or desired. A devolution of political power, providing greater self-rule to other territorial scales can be grounded in a desire to manage ethnic and regional diversity within the state, by a desire to develop governance structures that are efficient, or by a commitment to the principle of subsidiarity, namely that decisions should be taken at the lowest, practical, level possible (Henderson et al. 2013). Despite recent examples of considerable decentralisation in the last 30 years, we lack robust data and tools for examining how citizens feel about the territorial scales of political life. Specifically, we understand little about how citizens feel about decentralisation, how it relates to the political communities to which they feel attached, and what impact these attitudes have on policy variation within states. Understanding how citizens feel about the territorial scales of political life is particularly important given the salience of the topic. Spain, Iraq, and Hong Kong offer diverse cases where discontent with the level of regional autonomy can have wider, grave socio-political consequences. There are therefore important risks to both political and social stability if there is significant dissatisfaction with or detachment from existing multi-level governance structures, or if governments and their electorates have contradictory ‘ideal’ structures at different territorial scales. This can include,