A Political Approach to the Assignment of Powers in a Federal System
10/29/2001
Working Paper
The State
In order understand the comparative theory of federal performance, the author develops a set of conditions that help differentiate among federal systems.These conditions serve a second purpose: the theory of fiscal federalism provides a set of systematic insights into the performance of federal systems. What follows can also be thought of as an attempt to make explicit some of the political assumptions underlying this theory.