Introduction

Abstract

“For anyone who might not yet have noticed, political decentralization is in fashion. Along with democracy, competitive markets, and the rule of law, decentralized government has come to be seen as a cure for a remarkable range of political and social ills” (Treisman, 2007: 1). Usually advocated as a good governance solution for newly democratizing states, political decentralization reforms have also been taking place in a series of old European democracies. Thus, Belgium, France, Italy and the United Kingdom, as well as the newly democratizing Spain, came to reinforce the rank of countries with a multi-tiered government system, which was previously limited to classical federations – Switzerland, Germany and Austria.