This is a ground-breaking book on one of the most remarkable governance trends in the world today: the rise of subnational regional authority. Understanding why regions have claimed new relevance in so many countries is a pressing question for comparative politics, and Hooghe and Marks have provided a powerful answer that will change the way we study this phenomenon. Moving beyond the dominant assumption that form follows function, the authors carefully show how attachments to community have shaped the territorial structure of governance. This book is a major achievement.
Kent Eaton, Professor of Politics, University of California at Santa Cruz
Community, Scale, and Regional Governance is a real breakthrough in research on regional governance. Not only do Hooghe and Marks provide a comprehensive and rigorous measurement of regional authority in 81 countries over a period of 60 years, they develop a compelling theory that explains the differentiation of authority within states.
Tanja Börzel, Jean Monnet chair, Free University of Berlin
A must-read for scholars and policy makers interested in multilevel governance, the design of regional government, regional autonomy, federalism, and decentralization.
Tulia G. Falleti, Class of 1965 Term Professor of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania
This well-written and skillfully-executed study develops new measures to show that governance exhibits great variation within as well as between countries. The authors argue that within-nation differences are decisive for explaining variation in regional authority between countries. After a period when the bloom had gone off the rose of regional governance, this study brings it back with a new level of precision and sophistication.
Sidney Tarrow, Emeritus Maxwell M. Upson Professor of Government, Cornell University