Territorial political exchange in federal and unitary countries

This article considers territorial politics in Italy, France, Switzerland and the Federal Republic of Germany. Its purpose is to demonstrate that theses which judge both unitary‐regionalised and federal co‐operative systems as having become centralised rest on static and formal juridical analyses. A broader approach, grounded on the dynamics of intergovernmental public policies and utilising an exchange‐based concept of power, is proposed. In such a framework, a government level is considered as a complex organisation possessing juridico‐institutional, financial, administrative and politico‐representative power resources. In the four countries considered, the national government does not possess enough resources hierarchically to control the subnational governments. The latter, on the basis of the mobilisation of resources, force the former to negotiate the content of decision‐making and implementation of nationwide integrated policies. This negotiation process is defined as territorial political exchange.