nineteenth centuries CE. Notwithstanding the differences, though, govern- ments in both states and empires were slowly but surely increasing their hold on the territory through bureaucratization.
polity would be governed through a system of itinerant, palace-based supervisory officials. They were often related to the monarch. Thus, in ancient Egypt, these officials traveled throughout the kingdom, and this situation existed until the sixth dynasty (2350–2150 BCE). At that time Egyptian society had become more populous, and the local/regional elites came to replace the itinerant officials. Egypt was then divided into 42nomes or provinces each with a nomarchor governor. Hence, Egypt was thefirst state where subnational jurisdictions were established at the regional level (Finer, 1997, p. 151). Other united territories continued to be governed from the center through relatives of the ruler. To be sure, sometimes later empires would still administer the land through traveling officials. In fact, Charlemagne’s court traveled the territory continuously, and he controlled his territory through personal representatives known as missi dominici.
City-states and empires were often engaged in warfare, seeking to expand the territory they controlled and extracted resources from. Conquered territories were indirectly ruled through local kings. It was Tiglath-Pileser III (745–728 BCE), king of the Assyrian empire, who introduced direct rule in all conquered lands. Indeed, the Assyrians were thefirst to introduce regional or provincial government in the conquered territories, effectively treating them as part of the heartland of the empire (Finer, 1997, pp. 224–225). There were local officials as well: district governors for the supervision of several towns and villages, and headmen in each of the localities.
The next step in the territorialization of the globe happened during the reign of Emperor Diocletian (284–305 CE) (see, for instance, Abbott and Johnson, 1968). In 286 he subdivided the entire Roman Empire in four prefectures, 12 dioceses, and 101 provinces. These provinces, in turn, were divided into civitates, and the latter in several pagi. Thus, the Diocletian reforms for thefirst time in history established a layered territorial hierarchy from the smallest local level up to the upper-regional levels. This has been very important to the territorialization of the globe, since with the decline of the Roman Empire, the Catholic Church adopted the Roman territorial organization as its own. Thepagibecame parishes; thecivitatesbecame the seat of bishoprics, and the Roman provinces became church provinces (i.e., archbishopric). Indeed, the church not only copied the territorial structure but also took over a variety of services (Miller, 1983, pp. 278–279).
This is important for two reasons. First, a system of layered subnational jurisdictions can be found all over the contemporary world, and in many cases was actually introduced by colonizing powers. The second reason is that there are marked differences between countries when it comes to which level of subnational government is considered the most important:
the local or the regional level? In the territories occupied by Rome and of which the secular jurisdictions became the Catholic Church’s religious jurisdictions, it seems that at least until the 1980s the regional level of government was more important than the local level. In territories where local tribal life was not obliterated by Roman occupation, a tradition of local self-government continued to exist. These territories often turned to Protes- tantism, and the organization of the various Protestant denominations mirrored much more the local, self-sufficient, self-governing organizational structure of early Christianity. Furthermore, many Protestant territories no longer accepted the supranational, centralizing supervision of the Catholic Church (Rokkan and Urwin, 1983, p. 33). This theory can be tested by looking at, for instance, municipal amalgamations (see Table 3.1).
They started shortly after the Second World War, in the Protestant countries, motivated by the desire to enhance and improve local public service delivery. It helped that these countries had a tradition of or were amenable to local self-government (Page, 1991, pp. 139–140). In Table 3.1 we can see how the number of municipalities declined strongly in Protes- tant-dominated countries such as Denmark, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Germany. The decline would have been larger in Germany had it not been for the reunification in 1991, which added municipalities. Municipal amalgamations were much less extensive in the Catholic countries. In France and Spain the number of local govern- ments only declined a little; in Portugal and Italy the number of municipal- ities actually increased somewhat. The hypothesis that in territories not occupied by Rome (and thus with more of a tradition of local self-govern- ment, or at least of less disturbed tribal government) municipal amalga- mations started earlier and were more extensive than those in Catholic countries can also be tested by looking at variation within one country. For instance, in Germany the Länder of Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, and Rhineland-Palatinate are predominantly Catholic and amalgamations of local government have so far been more limited than in the Protestant north (Hesse, 1991, pp. 365–368). Another example is provided by the Catholic provinces of Limburg and Brabant in the south of the Netherlands.
While local government amalgamations started shortly after the Second World War, they were mainly limited to the Protestant north and mostly occurred upon local initiative. In the two southern provinces amalgama- tions were imposed by Parliament and mainly not until the late 1980s. To have a Roman and Catholic past is not only relevant to Western Europe.
European settlers in New England adopted a commonwealth tradition of local self-government based on a charter or constitution. The southern
United States was settled by Spain and France, both countries with much more centralized as well as elite government (Elazar, 1966, pp. 186–188). In fact, and more in general, colonizing countries organized subnational government after the fashion of their own country (see later).