Liesbet Hooghe, W.R. Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor at UNC Chapel Hill and Chair in Multilevel Governance at the VU Amsterdam
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Data

Regional Authority

The Regional Authority Index is a measure of the authority of regional governments in 42 democracies or quasi-democracies on an annual basis over the period 1950–2006. The countries included are twenty-nine OECD countries, the 27 countries that are members of the European Union (20 of these are members of the OECD), plus Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Russia, and Serbia and Montenegro. The dataset encompasses subnational government levels with an average population of 150,000 or more. Where appropriate, we code more than one regional tier, and code separately regions with a special autonomous statute or asymmetrical arrangements.

SPECIAL MESSAGE TO RAI USERS
We are currently updating and revising the RAI index for 42 countries up to 2011. We welcome your comments/ feedback/ suggestions for particular countries. Please send an email to Arjan H. Schakel.

We are also extending the RAI index to 27 Latin American countries, five South-East Asian countries, and Israel. Stay tuned.

Regional authority is measured along eight dimensions: institutional depth, policy scope, fiscal autonomy, representation, law making, executive control, fiscal control, constitutional reform. Click here for the coding scheme. A regional data set contains annual scores for regional governments or tiers in 42 countries for the period 1950-2006. A country data set aggregates these scores to the country level.

Regional data

Country data

(Regional scores aggregated to the country)

Additional Documentation

How to cite?

When using these data sets, please refer to: Liesbet Hooghe, Gary Marks, Arjan H. Schakel (2010), The Rise of Regional Authority: A Comparative Study of 42 Democracies, London: Routledge.

Most countries have one or two levels of regional or intermediate government, yet we have little systematic idea of how much authority they wield, or how this has changed over time. This book measures and explains the formal authority of intermediate or regional government in 42 advanced democracies. We track regional authority on an annual basis from 1950 to 2006.

Subsequent chapters:

  1. Conceptualize region and regional authority and set out the coding scheme;
  2. Operationalize eight dimensions of regional authority and discuss how to handle empirical ambiguity or complexity;
  3. Crossvalidate our RAI index with six other measures;
  4. Explain regionalization over the past half-century by examining four influences – functionality, democratization, European integration, identity;
  5. Provide detailed country profiles and tables.

An earlier version was published as a special issue with Regional and Federal Studies (2008), which should be downloadable through your institute/university or directly from the Taylor & Francis website. If you are unable to get hold of the book or the special issue, please contact hooghe@unc.edu.