Local Fiscal Equalization: a New Proposal and an Experiment

This paper formalizes the new schemes of fiscal equalization that has been decided in 2009 and will be introduced at the local level in the canton of Fribourg (Switzerland) in 2011. It develops the political economy of the proposal with the aim of understanding the participative democratic process that led to the acceptance of a radical change in the canton's equalization policy, the normative concept of solidarity which founds this policy and its model implementation.