I have a sentence in my textbook confusing me. The sentence is: Another influential factor for brokers is the extent to which the authority is centralized or decentralized.
My concern is what the role of “to” in this sentence is. As you can see, here “extent to something” looks like a noun phrase, “to which …” is usually a clause. So when the two are linked together “extent to which …”, it is a noun phrase or a clause in this sentence?
Please give me some clarification or ideas about it.
In addition, I modify this sentence as “Another influential factor for brokers is the extent that the authority is centralized or decentralized." The meaning is the same to or clearer than the original sentence?