Citizen Preferences Over Centralization of Power: Evidence from a Survey Experiment with Ethiopian University Students

In federal systems, powers are delegated to both national and sub-national governments. Often times, political conflict arises over the degree to which a) power should be decentralized vs centralized overall and b) which powers should be delegated to which level of government. While some citizens may have preferences for fully decentralized or centralized governance, others may prefer a mix of power to be delegated to both the federal and local governments. In this survey, we use a conjoint experiment to evaluate how preferences for decentralization and centralization might vary across a number of policy dimensions, including public employment, security provision, and cultural policy.