Federalism and urban primacy: political dimensions that influence the city–country divide in Australia

ABSTRACT

With Australia’s population set to triple in the twenty-first century, its federal government is investing in decentralization. This is because Australian states exhibit high urban primacy, where one city is dominantly large. Institutional perspectives of primacy suggest political factors are usually significant drivers. For example, strong localism and decentralized settlement patterns are usually concomitant whilst the same can be said of centralized governance and primacy. It is unclear how institutions might influence primacy in Australia’s large states. To better understand, we contextualize Australian federalism within the primacy debate. Using eighteen measures of intergovernmental power, we determined that the Australian federation is comprised of comparably strong federal and state tiers, underlaid by weak local and regional government. The results suggest primacy in Australian states is reinforced by institutions, contrasting the universality of environmental determinism and suggesting an opportunity to decentralize Australia’s growing population through the devolution of decision making powers.

KEYWORDS:

• Urban primacy
• decentralization
• Australia
• institutions
• cities

Acknowledgements

The paper was produced as part of George Wilkinson’s PhD programme at the University of Western Australia. Authors’ contributions – George Wilkinson: Conceptualisation, Methodology, Validation, Formal Analysis, Investigation, Data Curation, Writing – Original Draft, Review and Editing, Visualisation, Project Administration. Fiona Haslam McKenzie and Julian Bolleter: Resources, Writing – Review and Editing, Supervision.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data available upon request.

Notes

1 Capitals in the second tier of government.

2 Former federal, state or long-serving colonial capitals.

Additional information

Funding

George Shoemaker Wilkinson III’s tuition is covered by the Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Fees Offset (Domestic).