The Centralization vs Decentralization issue across the Atlantic

[Bono]

I've often thought of this.
Why is it that in the americans, right-wng parties generaly tend to favor most decentralization, while left-wing parties favor centralizing issues more, while in Europe the exact thing happens, with the right rarely favoring decentralization/devolution, etc? The only exceptiont to this in Europe I can find and the right wing regionalist parties, like Flemish Interest, Convergence and Union, or the Basque Nationalist Party, and the right in Switzerland. Is there any good explanation for this?

[ag]

A matter of tradition. To the extent that the "mainstream right" parties are the more traditionalist and conservative political entities around, they tend to support the arrangement that has come down since the "good old days". In the US (and in Switzerland, by the way), this means stressing the federal nature of the state, the "states rights", if you wish. In France, Spain or the UK, in contrast, with their traditions of centralized imperial government, the autonomy is forever a revolutionary, not a conservative concept. By the way, in Italy, where the united state has not even 150 years of history, Lega Nord is rightist, not leftist, and the regional autonomy is not a "leftist" issue.

[Democratic Hawk]

As a member of the center-left British Labour Party, I, personally, favour decentralisation. I'd love regional government of the German Lander kind

Dave