IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/publus/v50y2020i4p698-709..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Subsidiarity and the Moral Justification of Intergovernmental Equalization Grants to Decentralized Governments

Author

Listed:
  • Joseph Drew
  • Masato Miyazaki

Abstract

An important problem with decentralized government relates to its tendency to create disparities between the various units with respect to their capability to provide public goods. In response to this problem, intergovernmental equalization grant transfers are a ubiquitous feature of many systems of decentralized government. However, since the earliest times, scholars of fiscal federalism have struggled to provide a convincing moral justification for providing intergovernmental equalization grants. We outline how the principle of subsidiarity might be employed to create a robust moral justification for providing equalization transfers. In addition, we explicate the steps required to operationalize a subsidiarity-based grant system and conclude with a consideration of some of the difficulties that might be encountered in doing so.

Suggested Citation

  • Joseph Drew & Masato Miyazaki, 2020. "Subsidiarity and the Moral Justification of Intergovernmental Equalization Grants to Decentralized Governments," Publius: The Journal of Federalism, CSF Associates Inc., vol. 50(4), pages 698-709.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:publus:v:50:y:2020:i:4:p:698-709.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/publius/pjaa018
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:publus:v:50:y:2020:i:4:p:698-709.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/publius .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.