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This article sets out a conceptual basis for measuring regional authority and engages basic measurement issues. Regional authority is disaggregated into two domains (self-rule and shared rule) and these are operationalised in eight dimensions. The article concludes by examining the robustness of this measure across alternative measurement assumptions. Adapted from the source document.

This paper introduces a new dataset on regional authority in 42 democracies for 1950-2006 and formulates five hypotheses. First, an S-curve effect describing a logistic association between the population of a country and its regional authority. Secondly, a heteroskedasticity effect, in which the variance in regional authority among larger countries is greater than that among smaller countries. Thirdly, an identity effect, in which the allocation of authority to a jurisdiction is influenced by the relative strength of a population's identity to the community encompassed by the jurisdiction. Fourthly, a democracy effect, which leads democracies to have higher levels of regional authority than dictatorships. Fifthly, an integration effect, which removes a potential economic cost on regionalization by providing a transnational frame for economic exchange. Adapted from the source document.

This article validates the Regional Authority Index (RAI) with seven widely used decentralization indices in the literature. A principal axis analysis reveals a common structure. The major source of disagreement between the RAI and the other indices stems from the fact that the RAI does not include local governance, whereas most other indices do. Two other sources of disagreement concern the treatment of federal versus non-federal countries, and countries which have recently regionalized and/or have asymmetrical regions, whereby the more fine-grained RAI captures greater variation. The second part of the article discusses content validity of fiscal indicators. Adapted from the source document.

In this article, we argue that countries with strong regional self-rule offer more incentives and opportunities to form networks of local collusion leading to higher corruption levels. In contrast, shared rule allows for more oversight on the national level which reduces political corruption. Using a recent dataset on regional authority, we test our hypotheses on a sample of up to thirty-six countries between 1984 and 2006 and find robust empirical support for the predicted contrasting effects of regional authority: Self-rule enhances and shared rule limits political corruption. Adapted from the source document.