Political Support for Decentralization: An Analysis of the Colombian and Venezuelan Legislatures

A worldwide trend of decentralizing political power, fiscal authority, and the responsibility for providing services to subnational governments has been especially evident in Latin America over the past decade. This article focuses on variation in intracountry support for decentralization, using data on bill initiation from Colombia and Venezuela to determine the domestic sources of this policy. While the data support prior findings that decentralization is supported by parties whose future electoral prospects are better at the subnational level, the analysis also shows that citizen's trust in government and greater wealth affect a deputies' support for decentralization .