Dr. Pablo Beramendi, Professor of Political Science (Political Economy) at Duke University, and Dr. Melissa Rogers, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Inequality and Policy Research Center at Claremont Graduate University, have recently published a new paper on decentralization. This work, titled “Asymmetric Decentralization and Inequality”, has been published by the Internacional Center for Decentralization and Governance (IDEAGOV).

Abstract: This paper examines how spatial inequalities interact with asymmetric decentralization to shape redistributive effort and distributional outcomes. Using cross-national evidence on top income and wealth shares, progressive tax structures, and measures of asymmetric regional authority and legislative malapportionment, the authors find: (i) higher spatial inequality is associated with greater concentration at the top of the income and wealth distributions; (ii) asymmetric regional authority is, on average, linked to lower inequality and higher progressive tax shares, though its egalitarian association weakens as spatial inequality rises; and (iii) legislative malapportionment correlates with higher inequality and lower progressive taxation and typically amplifies the inequality-raising role of spatial disparities. The results highlight that institutional asymmetries condition the capacity and willingness of states to tax and redistribute under pronounced territorial disparities.

You can read and download this paper by clicking here.