ABSTRACT
At the end of the day, how can we interpret the above described experiences of fiscal autonomy? Both in the European and in the American continents, the turn of the century has seen discontinuities of long-term trends in the sharing of powers among levels of government, as well as some fundamental reversals (not least in the shrunken ambitions of European multilevel governance), and the emergence of new tensions, sometimes connected with the shifting of the territorial boundaries of jurisdictions. As a result, the last two decades have been a time of momentous change for citizens, of significant operational challenges for policymakers and of intellectual excitement for scholars across the social sciences interested in the loci of sovereignty and autonomy. The full impact of all these changes is still unclear. Even in the relatively calm European waters, the events of year 2014 – from the repercussions of the Scottish referendum not just on the relationship between Westminster and Holyrood, but also between Whitehall and Manchester, to the heightened urgency of the Catalonia question in the aftermath of the unofficial November 2014 poll – have rippled outwards, giving new energy and new contents to the debate on institutional (and not just fiscal) autonomy.
