TOP‐DOWN AND BOTTOM‐UP: INSTITUTIONAL EFFECTS ON DEBT AND GRANTS AT THE ENGLISH AND GERMAN LOCAL LEVEL
研究了英国和德国地方层面制度因素如何影响拨款与地方债务的关系，发现政治和行政变量会削弱拨款与债务的正向关联，并指出当前文献在制度分析上的三个不足。
This article investigates the impact of institutional factors on the relationship between grant funding and local debt in England and Germany. Using a panel dataset covering the period 2005–12, the research identifies a positive relationship between grants and local debt. The positive relationship between grants and debt is reduced due to the impact of political and administrative variables. The findings demonstrate three shortcomings of the current literature. First, in contrast to the dominant portrayal of German local administration as predominantly legalistic, partisan dynamics affect the allocation of grants to the German local level. Second, institutional variables operate differently depending upon grant type, providing a rationale against the scholarly practice of using aggregate grants. Third, grant mechanisms provide a promising key to unlock institutional dynamics in systems of multilevel governance, but only when scholars integrate institutional differences more explicitly in their research design than hitherto accounted for by political economy.