Whether it is Americans debating the role of states in Obamacare or Scots debating secession, the relationship between decentralization and social policy inspires passion. The core question is: Is decentralization good for the welfare state? Does it mean innovation, competition, and low costs, or niggardliness, inefficiency, and inequity? The social sciences, for all their collective research on both social policy and political decentralization, do not have a good answer. Until now it has been because they lack a crucial kind of data: comparable data on the role of state and regional governments. This conference redresses the gap, bringing together experts from federal countries around the world to shed new light on the key questions of federalism, territorial politics and public policy.

Territory, Austerity, and Social Inequality is sponsored by the U-M Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR) and Rackham School of Graduate Studies joint initiative "Social Sciences Annual Institute" and the Department of Health Management and Policy in the School of Public Health.