Introduction: Territoriality of the Vote: A Framework for Analysis

Abstract

Over the last 40 years the institutional landscape in Western Europe has changed considerably. One of the most notable transformations of the state concerns processes of decentralization, federalization and regionalization. This development is well documented by the regional authority index (RAI) developed by Hooghe, Marks and Schakel (2010). For the 13 Western European countries which are the subject of research in this book, they observe that each of them underwent regional reform except for the Swiss cantons and the Faroe Islands. Not only has the authority exercised by regional governments increased but the biggest driver of this growth of regional authority has been the proliferation of elected institutions at the regional level (Marks et al., 2010).