Hamilton's Paradox

Jonathan Rodden is the Ford Career Development Associate Professor of Political Science at MIT, and was recently a visiting scholar at the Center for Basic Research in the Social Sciences at Harvard University. He received his Ph.D. in political science from Yale University, his B.A. from the University of Michigan, and was a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Leipzig. In collaboration with the World Bank, he recently co-edited a book entitled Fiscal Decentralization and the Challenge of Hard Budget Constraints (MIT Press 2003). His articles have appeared in journals including The American Journal of Political Science, The British Journal of Political Science, Comparative Politics, International Organization, The Virginia Law Review, and World Politics.

"This timely book takes on a crucial topic for scholars and practitioners-especially in newly democratizing societies that are walking the potentially dangerous and complex road towards decentralization. It departs from what was becoming conventional wisdom, and develops a more critical and agnostic approach to federalism and decentralization than its predecessors. Roddenas arguments emerge from comparative politics, game theory, and modern macroeconomics, and his empirical approach combines subtlety and breadth by mixing quantitative and qualitative analyses, ranging from cross-country regressions to rich treatments of complex historical cases.(continued underneath)

• 1. Introduction and overview; 2. Promise and peril: intellectual history; 3. Sovereignty and commitment; 4. The power of the purse: intergovernmental grants and fiscal discipline; 5. Disease or cure? Political parties and fiscal discipline; 6. An approach to comparative case studies; 7. Fiscal federalism and bailouts in postwar Germany; 8. The crisis of fiscal federalism in Brazil; 9. The challenge of reform in federations; 10. The origins of subnational sovereignty; 11. Conclusions.