Nation building: why some countries come together while others fall apart

By S. Mueller. Regional & Federal Studies, 2018

118 citations recorded by the source corpus.

11 cases include many different types of democratic federal political systems like Germany, Switzerland, and the United States of America. The book leaves out the question of whether consolidation of public budgets is connected to the type of federal system at stake. This might be the reason why also general notions of the democratic federal systems under review are described in the case studies. For example in Switzerland Cantons are allowed to raise own taxes whereas in Germany Länder cannot raise taxes on their own. Therefore at least the consideration of the Swiss case as loosely coupled and the consideration of the German case as tightly coupled in public debts are convincing. Municipalities in Germany seem to have more leeway for raising or lowering their own taxes than Länder. The theoretical question (meaning for all 11 cases in the book) how this relates to the ‘deficit problem’ occurs. That means that it remains unclear if the democratic federal system makes a difference or what difference the democratic federal system makes. As the conclusion also shows an overarching solution about all 11 cases is difficult to find (294), because any rule might be disregarded in the future. Hence the solution of the book is as complex and heterogeneous as the real-world cases. Also, the comparative parts embracing the case studies are rather densely written. This makes the book a little difficult to understand for readers not familiar with federal studies, since the book addresses amateurs and experts at the same time. In terms of balance, the empirical parts of the book with the case/country studies (216 pages) outweigh the theoretical parts (82 pages). This relation seems justified, because of the large number of case studies. Given the theme of the book about consolidation policies, the subject is of high importance in current times and in general.

Subfields: Development

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