Party nationalization, and legislative de/centralization in federal democracies

Abstract

Federal systems have centralized at a rapid pace since the second half of the twentieth century. Legislative faculties have been transferred to the federal legislature through constitutional amendments or enactment of laws. This is due to the involvement of nationalized parties in the federal legislature. Regional and decentralized parties benefit from preventing centralization, while national and centralized ones benefit from centralization. I test this argument with data on federal elections and federal De/centralization between 1945 and 2010 in 11 countries. I use a Two-way fixed-effects strategy and find a non-monotonic correlation between party system nationalization and legislative decentralization mediated by party centralization. Decentralized party structures prevent parties from implementing centralizing reforms. I test the mechanism behind this through a Multilevel Linear Model and corroborate that nationalized parties only centralize successfully when centralized. Regional parties and decentralized party structures act as federal safeguards preventing centralization.