Between National State and Local Society: Infrastructures of Local Governance in Developed Democracies

Despite growing attention in comparative politics to subnational institutions, the local government systems that comprise the most common element of decentralization around the world have received little systematic attention. This article employs the first systematic, indicator-based index of local government systems in twenty-one OECD countries to analyze the role of these systems in state-society relations at the micro-level. Cross-national variations in these institutions correspond more to different types of welfare states than to federalism and decentralization as measured at higher echelons of states. The results point to the crucial but largely unexamined roles that local government plays in the operation, performance and even the development of these national systems of state-society relations. 1 Across the developed world and beyond, the reordering of territorial authority among and within nation-states has brought new attention among comparativists to sub-national levels of government. One of the most prominent consequences of this trend has been growing or renewed scrutiny of governance and politics at the local, regional and metropolitan levels.